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ONE Championship CEO on the magnitude of ONE: First Strike
ONE: First Strike is the first all-kickboxing card for ONE Championship and they have very much brought out the big guns for it.
I spoke with ONE Championship CEO Chatri Sityodtong about how stacked that card is from top to bottom.
The looming Featherweight Kickboxing Grand Prix and it’s massive profile
“The next Grand Prix that’s coming up is the Featherweight Kickboxing Grand Prix. Genuinely it is the single greatest pound-for-pound Grand Prix in the history of kickboxing. I think no one would dispute that. Everybody on that October 15th card has multiple world titles from various organizations, and obviously the main event.”
ONE: First Strike
Chatri Sityodtong continued, “A world champion title fight between Giorgio Petrosyan the GOAT of kickboxing versus Superbon. Who’s arguably up there right now, probably number one or number two pound for pound in Kickboxing today. And the rest of the Featherweight Grand Prix, the Grand Prix is just stacked you know. People like Andy Souwer, Marat Grigorian, the names go on and on, you know. It’s just a crazy division. Yeah, I would argue this Featherweight Kickboxing Grand Prix is better than anything that you’ve ever seen in K1 or Glory. Ever in the past.”
“If you look at the names, and you look at how good they are. It’s just head and shoulders above anything that K1’s ever done historically. I agree that the golden period was in the 90s. When we had all those spectacular kickboxers and we haven’t seen that since. Again this division, we purposely went after the very, very best Featherweights all over the world. The technical ability is insane and the world title collection amongst these athletes on October 15th is just insane. And so I think it’s a huge treat for fans. If you love striking this is a card you do not want to miss.”
