One Championships, formerly One FC, is one of the leading MMA organization in Asia right now, with One Championships CEO Victor Cui leading the charge. Cui states that one of the reasons that One Championships is different than MMA in the West, such as the UFC, is because the promotion is about sport and not about spectacle.
“In the West, the brand around the sport is about blood and guts, machismo, disrespecting your opponent, trash talking, throwing water bottles in their face at press conferences, and swearing and insulting their families, and their wife or parents or mother or whatever it might be,” Cui told MMA Junkie. “All of that stuff is accepted and encouraged in the sport in the West, whereas in Asia, we’re completely the opposite of that.”
Cui is leading a promotion in a region where the UFC would like to expand to in the future, but Cui believes the relationships he has developed will help keep One Championships as the biggest MMA organization in Asia.
“I can’t speak about another organization or what they’re able to do, but I can talk about what we do and what we’re good at,” Cui said. “But I’ve been in sports media for over 20 years, been living in Asia for the last 11 years, and our team are just world-class professionals (and) the best in the industry across everything they do. Our expertise is Asia. In every country or city we go to, I have a close friend that’s in the government, or the sports authority, or the military, or a general in the army in every country that we’ve gone to, because I’ve been very fortunate that I’ve already done business over the last decade in most of these cities or countries across Asia.”
The promotion's next event, One Championships 52, takes place on Friday, February 10 from the Stadium Negara in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia with Kamal Shalorus and Ev Ting headlining.
