ONE Championship: Xiong Jing Nan is out to prove her stopping power against Ayaka Miura

Xiong Jing Nan is set to defend the ONE women’s strawweight world title once again on Friday, January 14 at ONE: Heavy Hitters. Japanese star Ayaka Miura is set to be her latest challenger.

Ahead of her bout, ONE Championship caught up with the world champ to get her thoughts on her opponent:

“There’s no doubt that Miura is an excellent athlete. She’s really good at ground fighting techniques and jiu-jitsu techniques. It’s really hard to escape once she has grappled you. She likes to end every fight with her best shoulder lock technique from kesa gatame. And she has even injured her opponents’ elbows with it.”

Holding a professional record of 16-2, ‘The Panda’ has faced a variety of opponents with various specialties and is always excited to take on new challenges in her pursuit of being “unstoppable.”

“It’s a new challenge for me, a higher-level and much harder one. I’m not afraid. It’s just that I need to be more thoughtful. I have foreseen some scenarios that I might get into and how should I deal with them.”

While Xiong Jing Nan is known for her incredible punching power, honed by her boxing background, she has not shied away from mixing it up with world-class grapplers. They include ONE women’s atomweight queen Angela Lee and multi-time Brazilian jiu-jitsu world champion Michelle Nicolini.

“I have fought against excellent ground fighters and I have been always well prepared with takedown defense tactics. In my last fight, I defeated Michelle Nicolini, who’s an eight-time [IBJJF] world champion. Miura might have not won any BJJ world championships, but it doesn’t mean that she’s not good enough.”

As dominant as Xiong Jing Nan has been in her reign, Miura believes that her stopping power is declining. The Chinese superstar disagreed and issued a warning ahead of their clash.

“She thinks I’m losing the ability to KO? We will see in the ring. I will show her what a KO is and how it feels to be knocked down by Xiong Jing Nan.”

Xiong Jing Nan is looking to compete at atomweight again

Should Xiong Jing Nan defeat Miura, the 33-year-old Evolve MMA fighter will have effectively defeated all the ranked fighters in her division.

While she doesn’t like to look too far ahead, she bared that she does have a plan after this fight.

“I like to always fully focus on the current stuff before I can move forward. But now that I’m asked, after this fight, part of my plan is to participate in atomweight fights.”

Despite an already decorated career in ONE Championship, there’s one thing that has eluded the mighty champion – defeating Angela Lee at atomweight. Clearly, Xiong Jing Nan’s plan is motivated by working her way up the rankings to earn another shot at Lee.