ONE FC, Asia’s largest Mixed Martial Arts promotion is back this Saturday in Guanzhou, China with “Dynasty of Champions”. Their 28th event is headlined by a featherweight fight between Japan’s Yusuke Kawanago (14-4-2) and hard-hitting Russian Timofey Nastyukhin (8-1).
The ONE FC group is making their third foray into China, and the live show has nine fights scheduled. For their bigger events in the Philippines or in their homebase of Singapore, the company usually gets a lot of attention at the sport books, with four or five fights from each card appearing at the sport books the week of the fight.
For this event, 11 of the 18 contracted fighters are making their debuts as per the Sherdog database. This makes for an interesting situation, as what is actually going on in Mixed Martial Arts and combat sports on mainland China is basically a black hole.
Sherdog lists some events in China, but what are the rules of the Chinese Kung-Fu Championships? Does anyone even know? The event is available for live streaming at the ONE FC website and is always reasonably priced. This may be a good first introduction to those unfamiliar with fighters from main land China.
The sports books may still put up lines for the Nastyukhin vs Kawanago main event, as both fighters are ONE FC veterans and known quantities. Kawanago was stopped in less than 30 seconds by Rob Lisita in his debut in May, 2014 and he has been off for more than a year now. As for Nastyukhin, he scored a highlight reel knockout win in his ONE FC debut, back in December when he used a flying knee to drop veteran Eduard Folayang before finishing him off with soccer kicks, so the Russian will be a big favorite in the fight. That is another feature of ONE FC that makes the show compelling is that they have a set off rules that is different than the UFC’s standard rules most are used to.
The co-main event featrures England’s Christian Holley (10-1) facing Brazil’s Zorobabel Moreira (7-3). Both men are coming off losses and in ONE FC and they have been plagued by inactivity, so they are looking to get back on the winning track.
