Asian MMA Podcast

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Host: dana blouin

Producer: Emily Barner

Executive Producer: dana blouin

Jan 09, 2020

00:53:50

Shinya Aoki Pipe Bomb Article Trashing ONE Championship

Last week Shinya Aoki published an article that was a pipe bomb that trashed ONE Championship saying they would go out of business in 2020. It was then edited and republished as a much more ONE FC Friendly article. I discuss this and more with MMA Journalist Ant Walker

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Twitter: https://twitter.com/AntWalkerMMA

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCISghFUJelA6mcxfEQ7Wp5A

Dec 30, 2019

01:59:01

On this episode of the Asian MMA Podcast I team up with JHK of Kumite Radio to go over everything that went down in Asian MMA this past year, and oh what a year it's been. We talk about RIZIN, ONE Championship, ROAD FC, Full Metal Dojo, TFC, OWS, Tiger Muay Thai, Battlefield FC, Korean MMA, Japan MMA and oh so much more.

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Oct 12, 2019

00:09:29

ONE Championship Century Paywalled Typhoon Hagibis and a Shiny New ONE Grand Prix Belt

First things first, ONE Century isn’t just a stacked card, it’s two stacked cards back to back! That is just nuts! There are so many belts on the line! If you are not planning to watch these events just punch yourself in the face! Man! This is gonna be crazy.

But from an MMA business perspective, the big news about this event is that ONE Will be moving the second card behind a paywall in the US for the first time. Of course, they have their broadcast deal with Turner so the first card will air on TNT. So if you have cable you should be able to watch that.

The more interesting part of this is that the second part of ONE Century will move behind the B/R Live paywall, which requires a $9.99 monthly subscription to view.

If you don’t have cable or want to shell out the $9.99 you might want to google what a VPN is and give that a shot.

I’m going to link to a report on The Body Lock if you guys want to take a deeper dive into this it’s a great piece of work for you to check out.

Personally, I think it’s a good time and the right market for ONE to give this a try. The US market is used to paying for premium MMA content, which this very much is. Though I think it is going to be a hard sell given the timing of the show in the states.

Despite ONEs consistently claims of billions of potential viewers for each show and the self hype of their unprecedented social media views they are still a fairly unknown commodity to all but the most hardcore of the US fans. So it will be interesting to see if they are actually able to move the needle being behind a paywall.

We can really only speculate about the motivation for the move behind the paywall, but it’s not much of a stretch of the imagination to think that ONE is likely needing to generate some real revenue at some point. There have been more than a few sites that have jumped into the finances of the MMA promotion over the past few years showing that they are hemorrhaging cash every chance they get.

While the markets in SE Asia where ONE is the most established would not really support a PPV model, hell, even the UFC is on free TV here in Thailand, the US and Europe is another story.

If ONE Can create the expectation in those markets that consumers will have to pay for their live events then it could give them a path at least part of the way to profitability.

There live shows are on another level when compared to the UFC and I think that comes across well when watching it on TV. However, their approach to production, storytelling and to hyping up their own views on how great they are might turn off some casual western viewers.

If they do well in the market and drive subscriptions to B/R Live then we know the other big promotions like the UFC and Bellator have to keep an eye on ONE.

If they don’t, does it stall their advance to the US? Does it make their investors take a second look and question their bet on ONE?

We will have to wait and see.

Before I wrap up this episode I just want to touch on that new ONE Grand Prix belt. This belt is sweet, the style, lines, everything about it is this perfect blend between classic and modern. The one minor thing I can say about it is that the two side plates look a bit busy, but that is so minor. I am glad ONE came out with a new design for the Grand Prix winners and honestly they hit it out of the park.

The Pancrase belt is probably still my overall favorite design for an MMA belt, but this new ONE Grand Prix belt is a very close second.

Right as I was able to start recording this I saw that there was an earthquake in Japan, it feels like Mother Nature is throwing everything she’s got at ONE Championship this weekend, the typhoon and now an earthquake, but hopefully ONE Century goes on as planned.

You can find Bangkok Strange here: https://open.spotify.com/show/12sROHP7dvuXDoTrejZlOb?si=E39ke2W1R1qlVylBH_SQXw

Check out the article I reference at The BodyLock MMA here: https://thebodylockmma.com/one-championship/one-century-will-be-behind-a-paywall-in-the-us-is-it-the-right-call/

To stay up to date with all things Asian MMA

Be sure to subscribe to the podcast on iTunes, Google Play, Spotify, Sticher, YouTube and Facebook. I’ll have all the links in the show notes. Check it out.

Follow Asian MMA Podcast Everywhere:

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https://www.facebook.com/JaviTrujillo.mma/

Host: dana blouin

Producer: Emily Barner

Executive Producer: dana blouin

Aug 29, 2019

00:21:49

Malaysia Based Fighter Mostafa Ibrahim Radi - Asian MMA Podcast

In this episode, I chat with Malaysia based fighter Mostafa Ibrahim Radi about his upcoming fight in Full Metal Dojo against Javier Trujillo.

Mostafa trains out of Monarchy MMA in Kuala Lumpur

Follow Mostafa:https://www.instagram.com/mostafaradi/ https://www.facebook.com/MustafaRadiMMA/

To stay up to date with all things Asian MMA

Be sure to subscribe to the podcast on iTunes, Google Play, Spotify, Sticher, YouTube and Facebook. I’ll have all the links in the show notes. Check it out.

Follow Asian MMA Podcast Everywhere:Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AsianMMAPodcast YouTube: http://bit.ly/AsianMMA_YouTube Twitter: https://twitter.com/AsianMMAPodcast iTunes: http://bit.ly/AsianMMAPodcast_iTunesGooglePlay: http://bit.ly/AsianMMAPodcast_GooglePlay Spotify: http://bit.ly/AsianMMAPodcast_Spotify Stitcher: https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/asian-mma-podcast Website: http://www.AsianMMAPodcast.com

Aug 21, 2019

00:39:49

Thailand Based fighter Javier Trujillo discusses his upcoming fight at full metal dojo against Mostafa Ibrahim Radi from Monarchy MMA

Follow Javier here:

https://www.instagram.com/javitrujillo.mma/

Be sure to subscribe to the podcast on iTunes, Google Play, Spotify, Sticher, YouTube, and Facebook. I’ll have all the links in the show notes. Check it out.

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Aug 19, 2019

00:06:56

We had two massive shows go down. ONE Championship Dreams of Gold in Bangkok and Rizin 18 in Japan. And of course, we have to talk about ONEs first open weigh-in and hydration test since switching to their no cutting policy.

Let’s start things off here in Bangkok with ONE: Dreams of Gold. This was a kickboxing and muay thai heavy card, which ONE tends to do with their shows in Bangkok because that is what the local fans want to see.

This was a great card from start to finish, But for me, the fight of the night, the one that blew away any and all expectations was Stamp Fairtex vs Asha Roka. This was only Stamps second MMA fight, but keep in mind she is already the ONE woman's atomweight Muay Thai and Kickboxing champion, so she is no stranger to the fight game.

Stamp looked phenomenal in this fight. She took it to Roka and never stopped. She dominated everywhere this fight went. On the ground, where I had expected her to struggle she looked amazing.

At one point Michael Schiavello on commentary had one of his best lines of the night, “Roka is being mounted more than a pummel horse” because Stamp was just dominating on the ground.

Stamp ended up putting Roka away with an RNC in the 3rd. And from what I saw the rest of her division needs to be on notice.

I’m not sure if she is ready for the top of the division just yet, but it won’t be long.

Another fun and entertaining fight on the card was a clash between Cambodian Chan Rothana against Cuban olympian Gustavo Balart.

Despite having a massive size disadvantage Balart dominated most of the fight with his wrestling. other than the closing minute or so of the final round where Chan had a strong rally and came very close to finishing Balart, he controlled the majority of the fight.

Somehow, Chan took the decision victory. Decisions like this are just another reason I dislike ONEs methods of scoring the fight as a whole. There will be an in-depth episode about this in the future, but I think Balart got robbed in this fight.

Sticking with ONE Championship they live-streamed their first weight-ins and hydration test since switching to a no-cutting policy after the death of fighter Yang Jian Bing in 2015 while he was attempting to make weight.

ONE has taken a lot of criticism for their lack of transparency in a number of areas, weight cutting being one of the.

Michael Fiedel over at The Body Lock has a fantastic piece up about this and the whole history so I will link to that in the show notes, I highly recommend you give that a read, it’s very strong work by Michael.

I will say though, that I was very impressed with ONEs step towards transparency in this matter. Though I think it doesn’t go far enough.

For starters, the weigh-in and hydration tests were conducted by ONE itself. There was someone who was opening and checking the specific gravity of the urine, which is a step in the right direction after photos surfaced on twitter last week of Former UFC Champ and ONE VP Rich Franklin and another ONE employee and former fighter Bashir Ahmed handling urine samples without gloves.

After the test, the specific gravity and the weight were read off by and recorded by another ONE executive Ric Auty.

Ideally ONE should hire a third party to conduct these weigh-ins, much like a commission would be the third party in a country with a commission.

There is also the matter of this being just one of three weigh-ins and hydration tests that are supposedly done.

So there is still lots of room to improve, but I think ONE got off to a good start. I hope they continue to improve this and truely move towards transparency.

UFC 241 was also this weekend, and while it didn’t take place in Asia, ROAD FC and Deep veteran Kyung Ho Kang took a split decision win over Brandon Davis.

Moving over to Japan We closed out the weekend with Rizin 18.

This was a really great card that even had a kickboxing match with John Wayne Parr, who dropped a split decision to Zanolini

In other action on the main card

Manel Kape got a fantastic second-round KO over Mizugaki

Victor Henry pulled out a 3rd round finish over Trent Girdham with a slick inverted triangle despite taking one of the worst cup shots I’ve seen in a very long time.

Ayaka Hamasaki extended her win streak to 5 with a first-round submission win over Amp Boonsorn in a fight that was full of some very technical grappling. Amp spent most of the time in control on the ground until Hamasaki was able to get a reversal and secured an armbar.

In the main event, we had an amazing display of striking when Kai Asakura earned a beautifully violent first round knock out over Kyoji Horiguchi.

Asakura used his reach to his advantage and played it cool early on with Horiguchi being the aggressor. But about a minute in he hurt Horiguchi and the aggression came out, he chased him down landing everything in his arsenal before putting Horiguchi out cold.

It was a fantastic main event to cap off a great card.

That's all I have for you guys today

To stay up to date with all things Asian MMA

Be sure to subscribe to the podcast on iTunes, Google Play, Spotify, Sticher, YouTube, and Facebook. I’ll have all the links in the show notes. Check it out.

Follow Asian MMA Podcast Everywhere:

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https://thebodylockmma.com/one-championship/one-championship-live-streams-weigh-ins-following-criticism-of-closed-door-policies/

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Michael Fiedels Piece about ONE weight cutting at The Body Lock:

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Host: dana blouin

Producer: Emily Barner

Executive Producer: dana blouin

Aug 15, 2019

00:08:22

ONE Championship goes to Inda, SFC 8, UGB Rebirth, FMD, Fighters Give Back

Singapore Fighting Championship has announced their next show which will be September 28th at the FooChow building in Singapore.

That have not announced the full fight card yet, but when they do I will be sure to update everyone on the MMA matches.

SFC generally does cards with a mix of combat sports on them, MMA, Boxing, and Muay Thai. I watched the last event on their Facebook live stream and there were some really good fights. I would highly recommend checking them out. Link to their FB page will be in the show notes.

It’s been a year since we have seen a Full Metal Dojo show in Bangkok, but now it looks as though they will be putting on their next event on August 31st. There still isn’t much known, but friend of the show Javier Trujillo will be in the main event against Ibrahim Radi from Monarchy MMA in Kuala Lumpur.

Javier recently made the move from Bangkok to Chaing Mai so he could focus more on his training. Last time I spoke to him he said things couldn’t be going any better. Hopefully, I will have him on the show soon so discuss his upcoming fight.

Over to Manila where Underground Battle MMA has announced their next card coming up August 23rd. No details on the card yet.

But what I love about UGB is that they have fights that are also a blend of MMA and stick fighting. They are absolutely wild. I’ll put a link in the show notes to one of their trailers that gives you a little taste of what that looks like. But definitely get excited about this.

In Malaysia Octagon Asia MMA has announced the Season 2 finalist for their tournaments at Bantamweight, Lightweight and Heavyweight That kick off on September 14th.

There are some well-known names in the local scene in the tournament. At Bantamweight, you’ve got Effendey Kalai and Aaron Lo

At lightweight, you’ve got Joseph Yap

And at Heavyweight we’ve got Niker Tan

WIth 8 men per division, this could be anyone's game. Tournament style changes the dynamics, anything can happen.

In ONE Championship news, Chatri Sityodtong posted on his Facebook on August 8th that ONE Championship will 100% be going to India in 2020.

Of course they have a number of Indian fighters signed to the promotion and that being the second biggest market in Asia, it would make sense they want to begin to establish a base there.

ONE has also been making claims that they will hold a show in the US in 2020, that one I am far more skeptical about and will be interesting to see how ONE does they have to work within the confines of a regulating body like a commission.

Lastly, but surely not least. I was in Manila over the weekend for a charity event called Black Tie Black Eye Affair. I went there to watch my friend Bev, the Deisel Diva compete in a white-collar boxing match.

But what I want to bring some light to is how involved the local MMA scene was in supporting the event.

Both Brandon Very and Mitch Chilson were in attendance to support the cause, and from talking with others involved in the event they did a lot more than just show up, they gave a lot of their time and resources to help out.

This is one of the things I love about MMA, so many of the stars in the sport are generous with their time and resources, a lot of it we just don’t know about as well. Had I not been to this event I would have had no idea that Mitch or Brandon were there, and if other people had not told me how involved they were and how much they did to help out I would not have known because they weren’t advertising that.

I can think of countless other examples from other fighters as well. Enson Inoue comes to mind and his efforts to raise awareness help those people in Northern Japan after the earthquake and tsunami devastated that area.

Another fighter that comes to mind is AJ Pyro who is probably one of the most giving fighters I have ever met. When you meet AJ you can tell that giving back is just something that is hard-wired into him. AJ does everything from helping disaster victims to rescuing stray animals.

And there are countless more fighters who go out of their way and give their time to support great causes, I can’t name them all. In a sport that has it’s ups and downs this is always a bright spot for me.

To stay up to date with all things Asian MMA

Be sure to subscribe to the podcast on iTunes, Google Play, Spotify, Sticher, YouTube, and Facebook. I’ll have all the links in the show notes. Check it out.

Follow Asian MMA Podcast Everywhere:

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=40-E1nGltM8

Chatries post about India:

gb.facebook.com/yodchatri/posts/2494059867322826">https://en-gb.facebook.com/yodchatri/posts/2494059867322826

UGB MMA fighting with sticks:

Singapore Fighting Championship:

https://www.facebook.com/singaporefightingchampionships

Host: dana blouin

Producer: Emily Barner

Executive Producer: dana blouin

Aug 07, 2019

00:10:02

ONE Championship Dawn of Heroes recap, Pancrase 305 bouts added and Battlefield FC Update - Asian MMA Podcast

Over the weekend we had ONE Championship back in action in Manila.

But before we get into that we have an update on the Battlefield FC event I talked about last week. Several outlets are reporting that all fighters have been paid.

That’s a move in the right direction, but it’s still going to be difficult for anyone to trust them going forward, two events and two PR nightmares.

Good sirs, might I suggest you move onto a different venture at this time?

There are two interesting matchups added to Pancrase 308 in September. Edna Oliveira will be stepping in to replace Nori Date against Emi Fujino in the strawweight Grand Prix semifinal.

We will also see UFC vet Issei Tamura try to get back in the win column against Katshshi Sugiyama who is on a two-fight win streak.

Both interesting fights I am excited to see. I am an old, old school Pancrase fan so I always get excited for their events

Moving on to ONE Championships Dawn of Heros that went down in Manila over the weekend.

This was a good event, the card was stacked and it was headlined by two title fights.

The very first fight on the card was one I was excited for because we had Muhammad Aiman taking on Sunoto. I’ve been following Aiman since his amateur days in MIMMA.

Aiman looked fantastic against Sunoto, I had him winning every round easily and he just looked fantastically dominate.

Aiman is just 24 years old, he’s got 9 pro fights under his belt and he keeps looking better and better. I am excited to see how he develops over the next few years.

My only criticism against Aiman at this point is that since he turned pro he hasn’t been finishing a lot of his opponents as he did as an amateur. I would like to see him get back to the high finish rate he had in MIMMA where all but one of his wins was a finish.

On this card we also saw Yushin Okami in his second outing with ONE Championship, unfortunately for him, it was another unsuccessful attempt as he dropped a decision to a very game, very tough James Nakashima.

This was pretty much a one-sided fight, Nakashima controlled it from start to finish.

Here’s one of those little quirks you see in ONE Championship. In the first round, Nakashima had Okami in a choke, that definitely wasn’t the best position, but he didn’t look like he was close to taping, but a lot of times in ONE when fighters are in bad positions similar to this, This particular ref will stand over the fighter and yell at him to give up.

It’s strange to me because I can’t remember any other ref doing that and to me, it seems like the most inappropriate way to give instructions to a fighter during a fight. Especially when they're in a bad position.

Moving up to the main card we had Demetrious Johnson take home a decision win over Tatsumitsu Wada. To me, this fight was a lot closer than it probably should have been.

Hats off to Wada for putting up a great fight, and arguably winning the first round and putting DJ in some precarious situations.

DJ was able to fight through it and come back for the win. He will be moving on to the finals of the Grand Prix to face Danny Kingad who punched his ticket earlier on the card with a split decision win over Reece McLaren.

I think this matchup in the finals is going to be a difficult one for DJ. Danny is the type of fighter that might be able to give him trouble. He’s Durable and has won every time he’s gone the distance.

We also saw Eddie Alverez get back into the win column with a submission win over Edward Folayang.

I’ve got to give it to Eddie, he got dropped with a leg kick early in the round and then Folayang jumped on top, but Eddie was able to get a sweep to land in top position.

After applying a bit of ground and pound of his own Folayang gave up his back before tapping to a rear-naked choke.

In the main event, Martin Nguyen took the second-round stoppage to defend his title against Koyomi Matsushima.

Matsushima looked really good in the first round, hitting takedowns and controlling Martin for a bit each time, but it was Martin that was doing more damage, even from the bottom and getting the better of the exchanges on the feet.

One interesting thing of note, and I think I’ll do a longer episode on just this topic, maybe next week was that this fight was in a ring, and twice in the first round Matsushima was going for a takedown and Martin went partially out of the ring, one time between the ropes and another over them.

Each time the ref warned Martin that he had to stay in the ring, despite it being Matsushima who was driving him out. It wasn’t like Martin was trying to get out of the ring to avoid Matsushima.

I have no clue what the ref was looking at or thinking other than it made no sense. And honestly, I am perplexed by the fact that ONE has started holding MMA fights in a ring. But, I’ll get to this later on, Ring vs Cage really deserves its own episode.

Anyway, when they came out for the second it was all Martin. He just turned it up to 11, he was able to shut down every single takedown Matsushima attempted in the second round and just picked him apart until he was able to force the ref to step in and stop it.

Great win for Martin, and a really good showing for Matsushima.

Overall not a bad show for ONE, a fairly good card, I will be interested to see the conclusion of the two grand prix tournaments in Japan later this year.

To stay up to date with all things Asian MMA

Be sure to subscribe to the podcast on iTunes, Google Play, Spotify, Sticher, YouTube and Facebook. I’ll have all the links in the show notes. Check it out.

Follow Asian MMA Podcast Everywhere:

GooglePlay: http://bit.ly/AsianMMAPodcast_GooglePlay

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https://www.facebook.com/Lanky.Madness/

Host: dana blouin

Producer: Emily Barner

Executive Producer: dana blouin

Aug 02, 2019

00:37:50

Will Chope Interview - The Most Active Fighter in Asian MMA

Will recently had a dust-up on social media with the CEO of ONE Championship, Chatri Sityodtong over a post WIll penned about the lack of drug testing in Asian MMA and his opinions on ONEs policies. Chatri would go on to say he agreed with most of what Will said in his post right before sending his staff out to get wills contact info and having ONEs corporate lawyer send a letter threating to sue him if he didn’t take the post down.

You can follow Will Chope here:

https://www.instagram.com/asiawillthekill/

https://twitter.com/AsiaWillTheKill

To stay up to date with all things Asian MMA

Be sure to subscribe to the podcast on iTunes, Google Play, Spotify, Sticher, YouTube and Facebook. I’ll have all the links in the show notes. Check it out.

Follow Asian MMA Podcast Everywhere:

GooglePlay: http://bit.ly/AsianMMAPodcast_GooglePlay

Stitcher: https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/asian-mma-podcast