ONE Championship, “Two” Many Problems

The Home of Martial Arts still needs to do some house cleaning.

ONE Championship is “The World’s Largest Martial Arts Organization”. Not “mixed” martial arts; we all know who owns that sport.

I did a shallow dive into the Asian combat sports “giant” last Fall, highlighting three surface-level issues that might have turned away potential new fans. I specifically talked about their focus on muay thai and kickboxing at the expense of MMA and submission grappling; how they now almost-exclusively hold all events in Bangkok; and the unprofessional, contradictory behaviour of Chairman Chatri Sityodtong. If you couldn’t tell by my lame pun, not much (if any) improvement has been made since last time.

Still too many hats

ONE Championship has made some cutbacks since my last article, but not in the places that will matter to casuals. Submission grappling remains the most disrespected discipline in the promotion. Yet again, a single grappling title fight in the Welterweight division has been promoted since the year began; but as the co-main event to a Fight Night on Prime Video (and Sky Sports) card with no other title fights. That’s down from the two grappling championship matches from last year; the other being a Flyweight title fight at ONE Fight Night 38 on 6 December.

Two grappling title fights. Three in-total since my previous article was published. In-fact, the Lightweight division hasn’t seen any title fights in over two years; that championship was supposed to be defended this past June.

As of writing, this year has seen:

• 5 MMA title fights at Flyweight, Heavyweight, Featherweight, Strawweight, and Bantamweight.
• 6 Kickboxing title fights at Men’s Strawweight , Lightweight, (interim) Flyweight, Bantamweight, Heavyweight, and Women’s Strawweight.
• 7 Muay Thai title fights at Featherweight, Men’s Flyweight (vacant), Bantamweight, Men’s Atomweight, Women’s Atomweight, Men’s Flyweight again, and (interim ) Strawweight.

The Women’s strawwieght MMA division is no more, but submission grappling as a whole has become a bigger afterthought. Losing an MMA division on top of that only solidifies the narrative that ONE Championship has all but become a stand-up striking league.

That’s not a bad thing, mind you. ONE is, by-far, the biggest global platform for Muay Thai. No other promotion in the sport provides the same reach or notability. If you’ve watched a professional Muay Thai title fight, it was most likely from an ONE card. ONE also provides an alternative to established kickboxing promotions K-1, Glory, and RISE. In fact, ONE has actively been poaching several names from K-1 in order to fuel their expansion into the Japanese market.

When it comes to mixed martial arts, it’s still more fun to shit on the UFC then it is to watch them. The Rizin Fighting Federation has become the UFC’s de facto alternative thanks to its fan-friendly matchmaking, consistent event quality, and improved accessibility; but their existence is still invisible to casual MMA fans. The Professional Fighters League has established regional branches in the Middle East and Africa, but the PFL’s domestic U.S flagship is no Bellator MMA. Speaking of Bellator, the man who made that brand a household name is getting back into the promotor role next year.

The question isn’t if ONE Championship should exit the global MMA (and grappling) market. The question is if the global MMA market still needs ONE Championship, or needs ONE Championship to do better.

Penny-pinching?

ONE Championship has been paywalling a portion of the cards from their weekly ONE Friday Fights series beginning with ONE Friday Fights 147 on 20 March 2026. These “Superfan Fights”, now branded as “The Inner Circle”, sometimes feature world title fights. The Inner Circle will set you back USD$9.99/mo.

That’s pretty shitty considering the promotion still has a deal with Amazon (and Sky Sports) to provide monthly ONE Fight Night events for Prime Video. The promotion responded by gradually phasing out title fights from Prime Video altogether. ONE Fight Night 40 and 41 featured a combined three world title fights; while ONE Fight Night 39, 42, 44, and 45 featured none of the sort. Depending on the month, Americans now require two separate subscriptions — one for Prime Video, and one for The Inner Circle via watch.onefc.com — in-order to watch title fights. You’d have to be an actual superfan to watch ONE Fight Night 42 behind a paywall because, again, that event didn’t even have title fights.

Or, maybe you just have to be lucky enough to live in a region where a ONE Fight Night card can be streamed on the promotion’s YouTube channel for free.

It gets worse: ONE still produces the occasional PPV event that can’t be accessed on any other platform. The inaugural ONE Samurai on 29 April was one such PPV-only event, and it cost USD$40. It felt as if ONE Championship was flipping-off Amazon (and Sky) subscribers by making them pay more money and forcing them to switch streaming apps. All told, it cost north of USD$65 to watch every ONE Championship event in the U.S during the month of April: The Inner Circle 10, Fight Night 42, and Samurai 1.

Compare and contrast Rizin.tv letting international viewers either buy a PPV for about £20, or sign up for a subscription that includes PPV access starting from £13/mo. I’d bring up the UFC on Paramount+ but (as anyone incapable of doing basic research found out the hard way) that’s only for select regions. I will bring up that, if not for TNT Sports, one could hypothetically watch all UFC events on Paramount Plus in the UK for more than £5.99 with ads. All that pales in comparison to the PFL and its regional leagues, PFL MENA and PFL Africa, which can be watched on YouTube outside the U.S for the low price of £0.

Between their insistence on holding 72 events this year (most of which are just Inner Circle / Friday Fights / ONE Lumpinee events), and making their product less accessible but more expensive, ONE Championship (still) doesn’t look like a billion-dollar fight promotion; they look like a fight promotion that’s trying to keep the lights on. Case in point: with the lone exception of ONE Samurai 1, every single one of these events took place at the same venue — Lumpinee Boxing Stadium in Bangkok, Thailand.

Quantity over quality.

Die by the Sword

ONE Samurai was the culmination of the promotion’s push into the Japanese market. The PPV was headlined by a rematch between Rodtang Jitmuangnon and the retiring K-1 mega star Takeru Segawa from ONE 172 back in March 2025. However, Samurai’s main event would be overshadowed by a bizarre controversy in the week’s leading up to the show.

To make a long story short; Rodtang had made several allegations against ONE, ranging from his contract expiring, to accusations of the promotion forging his signature. In response, ONE would file a lawsuit against Rodtang less than two weeks before the show, all while insisting that the main event would still take place. Not only did this lawsuit jeopardize the card, it provoked a response from Reinier de Ridder — who is no stranger to receiving less-than-stellar treatment from the promotion. The situation would ultimately be resolved in anti-climatic fashion.

ONE handled things a lot better than expected, to their credit. You get the feeling that they have to given the disrespect Chatri Sityodtong has shown to Japan and its combat sports industry on multiple occasions over the years. The fact is, however, that this supposed “monthly” event series will be presenting its second instalment three months after the first. ONE Championship is such a mess they can’t even promote a “monthly” series unless it’s being held in Lumpinee.

Don’t worry if you’re having trouble keeping up with all the different type of events the promotion has held, by the way. That just serves to highlight the lack of direction or clarity with the overall product. Between the numbered series (pay-per-views held sporadically), The Inner Circle (a paywalled weekly series), Fight Night (a paywalled monthly series), Friday Fights (a free weekly series held after The Inner Circle cards), and Samurai, ONE has spread themselves too thin.

All the while, ONE Championship insists they’re the upper echelon of martial arts, yet their focus remains almost-exclusively on kickboxing and Muay Thai. They claim to be creating “authentic heroes” who value “respect, integrity, and humility”. Tell that horseshit to Anatoly Malykhin after his (surprise retirement) rematch with “Reug Reug” Oumar Kane ended in a brawl. They claim to “hold the largest sports entertainment events in major cities across Asia”, but it’s been years since they’ve held an event in their homebase of Singapore, ditto Malaysia and the Philippines. As for global events, ONE’s lone international event pencilled in as of writing is a return to the Middle East next Spring.

ONE is still trying to be something that they’re not, and they aren’t fooling anybody. There has been no positive buzz surrounding the product this year. Whenever ONE makes headlines (outside content farm crap), it's for all the wrong reasons. Far be it from an internet nobody to tell Asia’s biggest combat sport promotion how to do their jobs; such unprofessional diagnosis isn’t going to fix the promotion’s problems. However, acknowledging such minor criticism would go a long way to making ONE Championship look more like a successful business, and less like an acquisition target.