By:  | October 3, 2022 10:14 am

Saygid Izagakhmaev made it two ONE Championship wins out of two on Thursday. He claimed a one sided decision win over Zhang Lipeng at the Singapore Indoor Stadium.

The promotion just released some footage from that fight at ONE 161 in which you can clearly hear Izagakhmaev talking to the Chinese fighter:

 

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Top position

Izagakhmaev is in top position and, in between throwing punches and elbows to his opponent’s face, he tells him,

“I’m the next champion, lightweight. Lightweight of ONE, okay? I’ll smash you.”

The Russian clearly felt confident enough to try practising his English mid fight. Whether or not Lipeng understood what he was saying we will never know but he must have felt the force of those blows.

The decision win takes Izagakhmaev’s record to 21-2. He was ranked at number five prior to this fight and might expect to find himself positioned slightly higher once the lightweight rankings are updated.

Long wait

Izagakhmaev clearly wants a title shot and one factor is definitely in his favour. Current champion Christian Lee has already beaten everyone in the to five, except him!

So if ONE Championship’s matchmakers are looking to find the next lightweight title challenger they probably won’t need to look much further than the Russian. Izagakhmaev has now won two fights out of two for the promotion and looks to be the only real contender in the division.

But Lee is reportedly set to move up to welterweight to challenge Kiamrian Abbasov for his title. A poster was even released promoting that bout on the ONE on Prime Video 4 card.

That event is set for Singapore on November 19th and, if the fight does get confirmed, Lee won’t be defending his lightweight title any time soon. There is the possibility ONE Championship could introduce an interim title although there isn’t much precedent for this happening when champions decided to move up, or down, in weight.

So Izagakhmaev will probably have to wait a while if he wants a title shot. But lightweights won’t be too excited about the idea of fighting an opponent who will take you down and then taunt you in your native language while throwing elbows to the face.