ONE Friday Fights 9 - 2023-03-17
A rematch for the ONE Lightweight Muay Thai championship headlines the biggest ONE Friday Fights show yet. It's so good and they give it away for free!
ONE Friday Fights 9 - 2023-03-17
Lumpinee Boxing Stadium, Bangkok, Thailand
Today’s ONE Friday Fights show is the biggest since the original, since it’s headlined by a ONE title fight.
ONE’s king of Lightweight (170 lb) stand-up, “The Immortal” Regian Eersel, faces Sinsamut “Aquaman” Klinmee in an immediate rematch of their fight back in October that ended up with a split decision victory for Eersel. 30-year-old Regian has been fighting since 2013 and has not lost since 2016, currently 7-0 in ONE. Eersel is not invincible, though, as his previous three fights were a split decision, a fight where he suffered a knockdown but won a decision, and then a split decision. He is the first ONE Light Kickboxing champion (won in 2019, four defenses) and the first ONE Light Muay Thai champion (won in the October fight over Sinsamut).
Sinsamut is 27 and only joined ONE a year ago as a late replacement, earning the Muay Thai title opportunity after two KO wins. He has a record of 86-16-3 and is scheduled later this year to participate in the ONE Openweight Muay Thai World Grand Prix. He’s big for a Thai fighter so throughout the years he had to go between Muay Thai and boxing to be able to find opponents his size to fight. Even so, Eersel has an 8 inch reach advantage over Sinsamut.
The first fight was very close. Round 1 saw leg kicks landing both directions, with each fighter landing only a few clean punches, perhaps a very slight advantage to Regian. Round 2 was even closer, with nothing particularly decisive between the two. Round 3 Eersel landed almost nothing, while Sinsamut landed a few solid leg kicks and Regian’s left leg was starting to look really gross. Round 4 was similarly even to round 2, but again the most memorable part was Sinsamut’s hard leg kicks ringing out through the arena. In round 5 Regian must have known he needed to make an impression, because he finally got aggressive and landed a significant number of punches to take the round.
Which means that by my uninformed eyes, I had the first fight… a draw by a score of 2-2-1. Either way, both fighters had a defensive, counter-based style in the fight, so there is an opportunity for a different kind of fight in the rematch if either decides to be the aggressor. Eersel had success with this strategy in round 5, so he could be the one leading on the show tonight.
ONE Muay Thai: Regular fights 3 rounds of 3 minutes, title fights 5 rounds of 3 minutes. Scored on the 10-Point Must System, but judges must declare a winner if the points are even at the end of the fight. 3 knockdowns in a round is a TKO. Elbows allowed, no throws, no grappling. Fighters fight in the 4 oz. MMA gloves instead of boxing gloves. ONE referees tend to break up the clinch almost immediately instead of letting the fighters work out of it.
ONE MMA: Regular fights 3 rounds of 5 minutes, title fights 5 rounds of 5 minutes. Bout scored in its entirety, not round-by-round. Knees to the head of a grounded opponent are legal, soccer kicks are not.
The show is located here:
Fights highlighted in bold were ones that I found particularly entertaining.
Part 1
Nakrob (60-20) vs. Chen Jiayi (22-4) (MT 135) 12:50
Yoon Chang Min (6-2) vs. Kirill Gorobets (12-2) (MMA 159) 30:33
Tatsumitsu Wada (24-12-2) vs. Ernesto Montilla (10-4) (MMA 135) 58:34
Black Panther (76-16) vs. Tagir Khalilov (23-11) (MT 135) 1:12:53
Yodlekpet (85-33) vs. Saman Ashouri (19-3) (MT 140) 1:29:37
Seksan (194-74) vs. Silviu Vitez (45-8) (MT 140) 1:50:22
Part 2
Chaongoh (19-0) vs. Sulaiman (13-3) (MT 134) 2:19:21
Petjeeja (202-12) vs. Fani Peloumpi (MT 121) 2:40:01
Sam-A (372-48) vs. Ryan Sheehan (30-9) (MT 125) 3:00:32
Kulabdam (66-17) vs. Muangthai (202-43) (MT 145) 3:21:20
(C) Regian Eersel (59-4, 26 KO) vs. Sinsamut Klinmee (80-17-3) (MT 170 Title 5R) 3:42:24