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Wei Rui undoubtedly secured a huge win at ONE Fight Night 22 on his ONE Championship debut. Unfortunately for the Chinese fighter, the result itself was better on paper than in reality when looking at the bigger picture.
The former K-1 world champion drew one of the toughest tasks out there for his first appearance inside the Circle as he took on former ONE bantamweight kickboxing world champion Hiroki Akimoto.
The debutant secured a shock upset by beating Akimoto in a fight that came right down to the wire with many believing that the decision could have easily gone the other way on a different night.
However, Wei Rui was happy to come away with the win, carrying the self-belief in his post-fight press conference that he would only start to get stronger from this point.
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Wei Rui told all of the fans who may have been watching him for the first time on May 3 that he will look to continue raising the bar from this point on to show people just how good he can be. He said:
"That was really great. I think the first good impression is important. I will improve your expectations with more of my better performances in my next challenges."
Wei Rui can look to build from this point in ONE Championship
Wei Rui may have got the win at ONE Fight Night 22 but with the close decision going his way, he still will have something to prove to the fans. He certainly showed that he can hang with the top fighters in this division after all, taking Hiroki Akimoto to a contentious decision is a victory in its own right for a debut.
However, Wei has higher expectations of himself than just being here to make up the numbers and now he has a strong platform to try and build on.
There will be a lot of eyeballs on his next fight, whether it's a rematch with Akimoto or not, to try and see whether he can make another big impression.
North American viewers with an active Prime Video subscription can rewatch all the action from ONE Fight Night 22 via the free event replay.
