Yesterday John Wayne Parr announced he had signed with ONE Championship. The Australian already has his eyes on a couple of prospective opponents.
One of them is Yodsaenklai Fairtex who he has already faced three times,
“In my career, I’ve been lucky to fight with Yodsaenklai three times, and to fight Yodsaenklai with mixed martial arts gloves on in a cage, that would be such a killer fight,” he said.
Parr was a pioneer of Caged Muay Thai, one of the first people to put the sport inside a cage and have fighters wear MMA gloves. However he knows this type of fighting wouldn’t necessarily give him an edge against Yodsaenklai,
“Yodsaenklai punches so hard, so the thought of him fighting in mixed martial arts gloves sort of makes my tummy turn, and possibly diarrhea! But at the same time imagine if I won, it’d be so cool.”
It is fair to say JWP has never beaten Yodsaenklai decisively, the sole decision win came in his native Australia and was controversial. However he confidently predicts that a fourth fight would produce fireworks,
“I think we would stop the world. I think everyone would stop, go to the ONE Championship app, and they’d be in for the fight of their life. It’d be so exciting.”
Yodsaenklai hasn’t exactly taken the ONE Super Series by storm. He’s lost his last two fights and is coming off a devastating first round defeat at the hands of relatively unknown opponent.
But there is one other opponent Parr can see himself facing. He has never shared a ring with Giorgio Petrosyan despite the two men having competed in K-1 Max tournaments during the same period.
Petrosyan recently won the ONE Featherweight Kickboxing Grand Prix and this is another fight Parr thinks would make sense,
“Another one of my favorite fighters in ONE Championship is Giorgio Petrosyan. He’s such a talent. I’ve got to witness him fight live a few different times. He’s always been one of those guys that I thought our paths would cross, but they never did. He’s such an elite athlete, and his career speaks for itself. I think it’s a hundred-and-something fights with only one or two losses, so the guy is a legend.”
At the age of 44 these are the type of challenges that motivate JWP,
“Win, lose, or draw, just to share the ring with him would be a very proud moment. The only way to become a legend is to fight a legend, and Petrosyan will go down in history as one of the greats.”
Parr’s legendary status is already secure. But there are some big fights out there for the Australian in the ONE Super Series and Petrosyan and Yodsaenklai are two names that definitely stand out.
