Ji Xian battled his way to a unanimous decision over Song Yadong in a fiercely contested slugfest between China’s top two bantamweight mixed martial artists in the main event of ONE FC 24 in Beijing on Friday night.
The event, held in the Olympic Sports Center Gymnasium, was the first staged by ONE FC, or by any major international mixed martial arts promotion outside of Macau in China, where ONE FC plans massive expansion next year.
The main event pitted seasoned 27-year-old Ji, who came in boasting an 11-2-0 record and having held the bantamweight title in the now-defunct Hong Kong-based promotion Legend FC, against 20-year-old top Chinese prospect Song, who came in undefeated in his four fights.
Photo courtesy of ONE FC
Despite having won only one of those fights inside the distance, with a submission, Song promised a knockout, saying that his youth and conditioning would give him the advantage and claiming he had superior speed, agility and all-around skills.
For his part, Ji dismissed Xian as “young and inexperienced” and having faced “only average opponents,” vowing to “expose and finish him” within two rounds.
Despite having won all of his 11 victories by submission, and despite Song being primarily a striker, Ji elected to stand and trade with Song instead of taking the fight to the ground, with the two standing toe-to-toe and landing furious exchanges almost from the opening bell.
Photo courtesy of ONE FC
Ji scored a knockdown with a powerful left hook and the fight briefly went to the ground, with Ji coming close to submitting the younger man with a guillotine choke before Song escaped and the fighters made their feet to begin trading again. Ji landed head kicks and left hooks, while Song found success with sharp jabs and straight rights, with neither getting the better of the exchanges.
The second round was as furious as the first, with Ji landing a “superman punch” and pursuing Song with wild, looping punches, while Song landed straight rights. Ji scored a second knockdown in what was otherwise another closely fought round.
In the third round, the fighters continued to stay in the pocket. Both were marked up by this time, but Song looked the worse-for-wear, with blood streaming from his nose. Song began to tire and Ji began increasingly to dominate the exchanges, until he clearly had his opponent hurt.
However, fatigue had also taken its toll on Ji, and perhaps feeling he had the fight won, he did not press for a stoppage. The action dropped off in the last minute until a final, desperate attempt by Song to win by knockout spurred the fighters on again in the final 10 seconds.
In the co-main event, Chinese-Australian lightweight Adrian Pang returned from a 17-month layoff to score a third-round submission victory over the Netherlands’ Vincent Latoel in his ONE FC debut.
The heavy-handed Pang dominated the striking throughout, scoring a knockdown in the first round. In the third round, Latoel attempted a two-legged takedown, but Pang promptly countered with a guillotine choke to force the tapout 2 minutes, 15 seconds into the frame.
The win improved Pang’s record to 21-8-2, while Latoel’s fell to 15-16-2.
The undercard featured two four-man tournaments fought entirely among Chinese fighters, a featherweight tournament and a flyweight tournament.
Li Kaiwen won a unanimous decision over Wang Yawei in a battle of strikers to win the featherweight trophy, while Li Weibin survived a first-round knockdown to beat Wang Wei by unanimous decision in the flyweight final.
Elsewhere on the undercard, Poland’s Michal Pasternak overcame a knee injury to gut out a unanimous decision over Portuguese veteran Rafael Silva, while Costa Rica’s Ariel Sexton survived a knockdown to submit Russia’s Anvar Alizhanov in the first round.
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