Arjan "Singh" Bhullar will defend his ONE Heavyweight World Championship belt for the first time on Friday, June 23, in Bangkok, Thailand.
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Arjan “Singh” Bhullar will defend his ONE Heavyweight World Championship belt for the first time on Friday, June 23, in Bangkok, Thailand. The Canadian-Indian superstar will face ONE Interim Heavyweight World Champion Anatoly “Sladkiy” Malykhin in a unification match at Lumpinee Boxing Stadium at ONE Friday Fights 22 live in Asia primetime.
Despite the fact that the unbeaten Russian won the interim championship and the ONE Light Heavyweight World Championship, Bhullar does not see “Sladkiy” as the monarch of two mixed martial arts weight classes. He stated:
“First, he’s not a two-division World Champion. If I win, it will be, ‘And still…’ And if he wins, it will be, ‘And the new…’ There’s only one ONE Heavyweight World Champion.
“But, he’s a Light Heavyweight World Champion. I’m the World Champion of the heavyweight division, and we’re going to fight, and that’s what it is.”
While Bhullar was recovering from injuries, Malykhin won three consecutive fights. He won three KOs over former two-division champion Reinier de Ridder, Kirill Grishenko, and Amir Aliakbari. Despite his rival’s meteoric ascension to the top, “Singh” believes there are many “maybes” in the Russian’s game and that his prior opponents were unable to properly test him. Bhullar, who believes he is the guy to eventually uncover Malykhin’s flaws, stated:
“There’s been a lot of questions that haven’t been answered. I’m going to ask them, and I don’t think he has the answers.
“He’s never been punched. He’s never been kicked. He’s never been kneed. He’s never been taken down. He’s never been backed up. He’s never been made uncomfortable. He’s never been made to fight someone else’s fight. He’s never been made to fight on his back foot. He’s never been made to go deep into a fight where he throws everything onto a guy and the guy is still there.
“Those are a lot of questions. And his character? I do not think it will hold up.”
The huge MMA fight between Arjan Bhullar and Anatoly Malykhin has been planned for quite some time. Due to an injury, the Canadian-Indian was forced to withdraw from their first scheduled fight, prompting “Sladkiy” to take digs at his opponent in interviews and on social media.
The two were then slated to fight at ONE Fight Night 8 in March of this year, but the bout had to be rescheduled due to broadcast difficulties. Now that they’re about to meet, “Singh” has generally kept a respectful silence since he prefers to make his remarks where it counts most – inside the ONE ring.
He said, “Let him bark. We’ll see what kind of bite he has. It’s easy to bark, and it’s easy to bite when no one is fighting you back.
“I’m not like anything else he’s faced. I’m going to run through him. I truly do believe that. I don’t see this going any other way.”
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