2020 and 2021 proved that truly any type of combat sports match is possible. Early into 2022 and ONE Championship has already gauged interest in a president vs. president bout.
ONE took to its official Twitter account on Tuesday sharing a video of promotional frontman Chatri Sityodtong hitting mitts to ask who wants to see him take on UFC boss, Dana White.
https://twitter.com/ONEChampionship/status/1478342953676550177
ONE Championship and the UFC have been mostly friendly in recent years. They even went as far as to pull off the first-ever MMA trade when swapping Ben Askren for Demetrious Johnson in late 2018.
However, there was a recent instance where Sityodtong didn’t take too kindly to White’s thoughts on the making of a mixed rules fight pitting Johnson against Muay Thai legend Rodtang Jitmuangnon.
Don't expect Dana White to be following in ONE Championship's footsteps when it comes to mixed rules fights.
"If you have a company and you're bleeding money, you start throwing the kitchen sink at the thing."
Full post-#DWCS presser: https://t.co/VOlvDLM8f2 pic.twitter.com/2iBCZdjlL2
— South China Morning Post MMA (@scmpmma) September 22, 2021
“Dana is a great businessman, but he doesn’t know anything about martial arts,” Sityodtong said at the ONE Championship: Revolution post-fight press conference in September (h/t Cageside Press). “I don’t think he even knows how to throw a leg kick. He talks like it with his athletes, but I’d love to see a video of him throwing a leg kick. So I don’t think he’s qualified to talk about Muay Thai.
“For me, we have a different approach. UFC is the largest mixed martial arts organization in the world, ONE is the largest martial arts organization. In that, we have many verticals of martial arts. We have mixed martial arts, we have Muay Thai, we have kickboxing, we’ve even had a boxing world title fight, we have submission grappling. We try to excite and delight and surprise combat sports fans from all over the world, and from all genres.”
ONE Championship and the UFC are both set to kick off their 2022 campaigns next week. ONE: Heavy Hitters takes place on Jan. 14 with UFC Vegas 46 coming the day after.