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Former ONE world title contender Tiffany Teo will make a return to atomweight to face wrestling savant Ritu Phogat at ONE 161. 'No Chill' is confident coming into the match with the wrestling specialist, even making bold predictions on how it will end.
In an interview with ONE Championship, the Singaporean former boxing champion declared what her plans are come September 30:
"I forsee a submission. I’m hoping for the first round, and I’m going to be eating my pizza after the first round."
It seems that 'No Chill' is living up to her monicker when it comes to making a prediction on her fight with Phogat. She's quite bold too, as she's talking about submitting a grappling specialist.
To do this, Teo has to figure out a way to take down the takedown specialist. Sounds like a monumental task for the Singaporean.
Tiffany Teo believes wrestling won't be enough for Ritu Phogat to beat her in MMA
In another interview with ONE Championship, Tiffany Teo spoke about how Ritu Phogat's extensive background in wrestling doesn't worry her much. The Singaporean slugger said:
"Ritu has been wrestling pretty much all her life. She’s from a family of good wrestlers, and there’s even a movie about her. But to me, I feel like she might beat me in a full-on wrestling contest because of the ruleset. Or she might not, I guess we won’t know unless it happens. But if you talk about MMA as a whole, I feel like she hasn’t put it that well together because there’s more to MMA than just wrestling. You can be the best wrestler, but if you can’t close the distance, you’re not gonna wrestle anyone, right?"
It is true that takedowns in wrestling matches are significantly different from takedowns in MMA. The set-ups alone are wildly different. More often than not, takedowns in MMA are set up by strikes. Shooting in blind from a distance can make you vulnerable to an intercepting strike - whether it's a punch or a knee.
If Teo's assessment is any indication, we might expect her to use her strikes to keep Phogat at a distance and never let her in shooting range. In freestyle wrestling, it's generally understood that you only shoot for a takedown once you are at arm's length from your opponent.
If Tiffany Teo can manage to keep Phogat from reaching her shooting range while peppering her with strikes from the outside, she might just have an easy night.
