Why ONE FC is now ONE Championship
Victor Cui: “In Asia, there’s only maybe 35 percent of people that speak English as a first language. When you start making longer words, the harder it is to translate it.”
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: Age of Champions takes place on Friday in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Flyweight champion Adriano Moraes vs. Asuka Mikami is the headliner.
