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Anatoly Malykhin did not mince his words when he was asked about ONE heavyweight champion Arjan Bhullar this week. The Russian will take on Kirill Grishenko for the interim title at ONE: Bad Blood on Friday and is clearly unimpressed with the other man he's been linked to fighting on several occasions:
'This is the fight that will show the real champion. About Bhullar - I don't see him as the champion at all. A champion should have a big heart, should go to the fight. He should open the opportunites for candidates. But Bhullar is not fighting for one and a half years already and he's like a chicken, hiding his eggs. He is not a fighter at all for me. This is the fight that's going to be for the championship,' said Malykhin.
Bhullar won the title with a TKO victory against long-standing champion Brandon Vera in April 2021. Malykhin has fought twice since then and has racked up an overall career record of 10 straight victories - all of them coming via stoppage.
Interestingly, just a day after the Tiger Muay Thai fighter's comments, the news broke that Bhullar had signed a new deal with ONE. So a match-up between the pair at some stage this year could well be inevitable.
Malykhin chasing 50k bonus against Grishenko
The big man has only fought twice in ONE Championship. Neither of those bouts saw the second round. The 34-year-old needed less than three-and-a-half minutes to put away Alexandre Machado on his debut. It took him less than three to knockout Amir Aliakbari in September. Needless to say, he fancies his chances of snagging a performance bonus on Friday:
'For Kirill, it’s going to be a very, very hard evening. I’m going to crush it to the end to get my $50,000 USD there. Yeah, I’m planning to end him up in the third round. For the first two rounds, I’ll be showing the beauty of boxing and wrestling and in the third round, I’m going to finish him,' he said.
If 'Spartak' stays true to his word, it will be interesting to see if he calls out Bhullar in his post-fight interview.
