One Championship 37: Dynasty of Champions on 23 Jan 2016 featured a new and brutal guillotine defense, that resulted in a Knockout of the Year candidate.
Wrestling in MMA is often criticized as being short on things that make asses jump out of seats, but that charge cannot be leveled at Tang De Pan. He showed a nice leg trip, and when Zhou Biao clung on to a headlock on the mat, Tang stood it back up and then thundered down with a clean Back Souplesse.
The fight went back up to standing, and when Tang looked for a bodylock takedown, Biao snatched a Guillotine, jumping guard. Tang then executed a nasty back souplesse, but Biao hung tight. The third time proved to be a charm, as Tang stood back up and souplessed Biao down and out.
Then he soccer kicked him in head.
There have been charges that the move was illegal as Biao was spiked on his head. However, Biao was in control of where he was. Had he released the Guillotine, he could have landed on his hands, but he chose not to.
The first time, it worked. The second time, not so much.
ONE Championship is the dominant MMA organization in Asia, and it used to be know as One Fighting Championship. The reasoning behind the name change is interesting, and illustrates one of the issues in breaking into the Asian MMA market.
Everyone knows what one means, in every language everywhere. Add the word championship and although it gets more complicated, it is far easier to translate into dozens of Asian languages than is ONE Fighting Championship.
Thus it was that as CEO Victor Cui’s One Fighting Championship consolidated its dominance as the premiere MMA league in Asia, the Fighting had to go.
ONE Championship.
“In Asia, there’s only maybe 35 percent of people that speak English as a first language,” said Cui to Marc Raimondi for MMAFighting.com. “When you start making longer words, the harder it is to translate it and get it across for our partners and sponsors and everyone to leverage and to use. From a practical point, that’s one part of it.”
“[ONE] is going absolutely mainstream. And that means you have to focus on things that people really understand and can relate to right away. They understand what “one” means and they understand “championship.” Everybody understands what a championship means. It means the best, it means the culmination of the top.
“That’s the theory that every organization in the world has taken. F-1 or NASCAR isn’t called ‘watch-the-car-crashing-at-200-miles-per-hour-into-a-wall-sport.’ Hockey isn’t called ‘watch-the-goons-fight-sport.’ They focus on the things that showcase how strong the sport is as a global property.”
“There’s no rule that says you have to have that in your title and I think the reason why I picked the name ONE in the first place was because I wanted a name that transcended the language barrier. If you didn’t speak English, you knew what ‘one’ was, chances are. It means the top, the best and everybody could say it.”
ONE Championship 38: Clash of Heroes, takes place on Jan 29, 2016, at Malaysia Stadium Negara, in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. You can catch the action via LiveSteam!
