ONE Championship recently released a retrospective video of Martin Nguyen’s legendary 2017 moment.
The Amazon Prime Video partnership has created an influx of new ONE Championship fans. Some of these fans may not understand how special Nguyen was between 2015-2019. ‘The Situ-Asian’ became a two-division world champion during that time and even made two attempts to become the bantamweight champion.
Looking back at Nguyen’s storied career, no moment was more significant than when he became the first simultaneous dual division champion by defeating Eduardo Folayang on November 10, 2017. ONE recently shared the iconic main event on YouTube with the caption:
“Before former two-division king Martin Nguyen returns to action against Russian wrestling star Shamil Gasanov on February 24, relive his iconic ONE World Lightweight title against Filipino icon Eduardo Folayang in 2017!”
Nguyen secured the lightweight title against Folayang, adding to his featherweight title he won against Marat Gafurov in his previous fight. Before vacating the featherweight belt due to injury, ‘The Situ-Asian’ dared to shine in an attempt to secure the bantamweight throne against Bibian Fernandes. He ended up losing by split decision.
Two years later, Nguyen lost the world featherweight title to Thanh Le, leaving him without a gold.
Watch Martin Nguyen’s win over Eduardo Folayang below:
Martin Nguyen has no guaranteed plans after ONE Fight Night 7
Since losing the featherweight title to Thanh Le, Martin Nguyen has lost to Kim Jae Woong, defeated Kirill Gorobets and then lost to Ilya Freymanov. While he continues to fight top fighters, there are questions about how much Nguyen has left in the tank.
During the interview with SCMP MMAThe former two-division world champion had this to say about his future:
“I don’t know, man. I’m just going to take it one fight at a time. I know this is probably going to be the last fight on my contract so we’ll see what happens inside, in this fight. I’m just going to take it as it goes and move on.”
Nguyen looks to get back on track against undefeated Russian Shamil Gasanov at ONE Fight Night 7 on Prime Video. Gasanov made his promotional debut with an impressive first-round submission against Kim Jae Woong in October. The featherweight bout takes place on February 25 and can be viewed for free by North American Amazon Prime subscribers.