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ONE Championship recently posted a throwback video of Martin Nguyen’s legendary moment in 2017.
The Amazon Prime Video partnership has created an influx of new ONE Championship fans. Some of these fans might not understand how special Nguyen was between 2015-2019. ‘The Situ-Asian’ became a two-division world champion in that time and even attempted to become the bantamweight champion twice.
Looking back on Nguyen’s historic career, no moment was more significant than when he became the first simultaneous two-division champion by defeating Eduard Folayang on November 10, 2017. ONE recently shared the iconic main event on YouTube with the caption:
“Before former two-division king Martin Nguyen returns to action against Russian grappling star Shamil Gasanov on February 24, relive his iconic ONE Lightweight World Title-winning performance against Filipino icon Eduard Folayang in 2017!”
Nguyen secured the lightweight championship against Folayang, joining his featherweight title earned against Marat Gafurov in his previous fight. Before vacating the featherweight strap due to an injury, ‘The Situ-Asian’ dared to be great by attempting to secure the bantamweight throne against Bibiano Fernandes. He ended up losing by a split decision.
Two years later, Nguyen lost his featherweight world championship against Thanh Le, leaving him without any gold.
Watch Martin Nguyen defeat Eduard Folayang below:
Martin Nguyen has no guaranteed plans after ONE Fight Night 7
Since losing his featherweight title to Thanh Le, Martin Nguyen lost to Kim Jae Woong, defeated Kirill Gorobets, and then lost to Ilya Freymanov. Although he continues to fight top-tier fighters, there have been questions about how much Nguyen has left in the tank.
During an interview with SCMP MMA, the former two-division world champion had this to say about his future:
"I don’t know, man. I’m just going to take this fight one fight at a time. I know this will probably be the last fight on my contract so we’ll see what happens in there, in this fight. I’m just going to take it as it goes and go from there."
Nguyen is looking to get back on track against undefeated Russian Shamil Gasanov at ONE Fight Night 7 on Prime Video. Gasanov made his promotional debut with an impressive first-round submission against Kim Jae Woong in October. The featherweight showdown goes down on February 25 and can be watched for free by North American Amazon Prime subscribers.
