Sage Northcutt puts disastrous ONE debut behind him: “It was a while back”

Sage Northcutt has moved on from his disastrous ONE Championship debut.

In 2019, Northcutt signed with the Asia-based promotion boasting an impressive 11-2 record and riding the momentum of a three-fight win streak. Needless to say, expectations were high for his promotional debut at ONE: Enter the Dragon. Unfortunately, it didn’t take long for things to take a turn for the worse once the bell rang.

29 seconds into the contest, Northcutt’s opponent, Cosmo Alexandre, uncorked a massive overhand right that landed clean, immediately dropping the photogenic superstar. Looking back on the devastating knockout loss, Northcutt sees it as nothing more than a bad day at the office:

“Man, ups, and downs happen to everybody’s life, whether they have a physical job or they’re working at a desk office. Whatever it might be, everybody’s got ups and downs, so that’s just something that you have to overcome. But like I said [with] the injury, that was my [first] fight at ONE Championship. It was a while back, so I’m excited to be back and I’m excited for this fight.”

Sage Northcutt suffered eight fractures to his face from the brutal blow, requiring nine hours of surgery to repair. Of course, looking at Northcutt now, you would have no idea that his perfect jawline was once rearranged by a heavy-hitting Brazilian striker.

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It was a long road back to the circle for Sage Northcutt

Sage Northcutt’s journey back to the circle was an especially difficult one. Not only did he have to recover from the injury he sustained at the hands of Cosmo Alexandre in his promotional debut, but he also found himself battling an especially bad case of COVID-19 that continuously delayed his return to the fight game:

“I’ve been training. I’ve taken care of a few personal things. Everybody knows that COVID -19 stuff threw everything into a loop, especially with a lot of people’s jobs and stuff. That was pretty interesting. But I’m always training, year-round, all the time. Always staying in shape and just training a lot.”

Fortunately, Northcutt was able to fully recover, and with a clean bill of health, ‘Super’ will turn his attention to scoring his first win under the ONE Championship banner. Standing in his way of completing that task will be Pakistani mixed martial arts champion Ahmed Mujtaba, otherwise known as ‘Wolverine.’

Ahmed Mujtaba will go into his bout with Sage Northcutt having similar combat sports experience. Holding an 11-2 record, ‘Wolverine’ has four wins inside the circle and is currently riding the momentum that comes with back-to-back first-round finishes in his last two outings.

Amazon Prime Video subscribers in North America can catch ONE Fight Night 10 live and for free in U.S. primetime on May 5.