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Former two-time ONE world title contender Tiffany Teo will face India's wrestling machine Ritu 'The Indian Tigress' Phogat on the main card of ONE 161. 'No Chill' is fresh off a win over China's Meng Bo in a marvelous showing of her MMA game back in January.
Like her opponent, wrestling specialist Ritu Phogat, Teo was also a specialist herself. Being a former Singapore boxing champion, Teo was feared mostly for her striking prowess. However, Tiffany Teo's performance against Meng Bo proved that she has evolved her style into an all-around MMA arsenal - something she doesn't feel Phogat has just yet.
In an interview with ONE Championship, Teo spoke about what she thinks of Phogat's MMA game:
"Ritu [Phogat] 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 going to wrestle anyone, right?"
Tiffany Teo cites fight with Meng Bo as evidence to Phogat's underdeveloped MMA game
Expounding further on her criticism of Phogat's MMA arsenal, Teo cited how the woman she recently beat, Meng Bo, fared against 'The Indian Tigress'. Meng took the fight to the Indian wrestling prodigy, hurting her multiple times. If not for Phogat's otherworldly heart and grit, she wouldn't have been able to pull off a glorious comeback win.
Speaking about Phogat's fight against Meng, Tiffany Teo said:
"We have seen from her past fights, like Meng Bo, she managed to get a takedown in the end, but she got knocked down a couple of times. She managed to get it done, anyway. But we could see some of the struggles that she had in MMA trying to use wrestling to her advantage. So she might be a good wrestler, but I don’t think that she’ll be able to do whatever she wants to do to be on the ground in the context of an MMA fight."
At this point in the evolution of the sport of MMA, being good at one thing isn't going to cut it anymore. Tiffany Teo has a solid basis for her criticism of Phogat's seemingly imbalanced skillset. There are, however, certain fighters who can rely on their strengths alone simply because they are that much better than everyone else in that area.
Fighters like Khabib Nurmagomedov and ONE Championship's own former lightweight world champion Shinya Aoki are perfect examples of this. Perhaps Ritu Phogat is aiming to do the same.
