Roman Kryklia targeting heavyweight dominance, looking to challenge Rade Opacic

Roman Kryklia made short work of Murat Aygun in their co-main event matchup at ONE: Full Circle and is now ready for his next challenge.

After another dominant performance at light heavyweight, Kryklia expressed his desire to move up to heavyweight during his post-fight interview. Among all the talents available, he mentioned one name that stood out the most:

“Now, everybody’s asking me about Rade Opacic. Of course it will be interesting for me to fight with him because he has now many good victories in ONE Championship and maybe people will want to see our bout. But to decide, the team of ONE Championship will make the decision.”

Opacic had an impressive win just a couple of weeks ago at ONE: Bad Blood. The Serbian gave a rude welcome to the debuting Francesco Xhaja with a second-round knockout victory. It was his fourth straight stoppage since making his promotional debut in December 2020.

When asked to give a preview of what would happen in a match between him and Opacic, the ONE light heavyweight kickboxing world champion hinted that it would be a tougher contest than the match he won three years ago:

“We had a fight three years ago and it was a very easy fight for me. But now I see that he’s better from fight to fight. I like his style. He showed two beautiful fights, but I’m confident 100 percent. I think he would be ready to fight.”

Opacic himself earlier expressed his desire to fight Kryklia again, claiming the result will be different this time around.

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Roman Kryklia aims to showcase the beauty of kickboxing more than anything

Roman Kryklia predicted that he would dominate his world title defense against Murat Aygun at ONE: Full Circle and he delivered on his promise.

It would've been easy for him to claim that knocking out his opponent was the plan all along. However, Kryklia was quick to point out that there was something completely different in his head:

“I can be aggressive, can be quiet, depends on the situation. I want to show to all the fans of kickboxing the clever style of kickboxing. Not only pure aggressive but I want to show the good technique and some intelligent moves so when I need to be aggressive, I become aggressive. When I need to wait, I just wait.”

Indeed, Roman Kryklia looked like he embraced the pressure from Aygun and went for the finish when he saw the right opening.

His methodical approach to the game has helped him dominate his current division. Now, it looks like Roman Kryklia will take his talents to a higher weight class for another potential world title.