ONE Championship 166 results: Anatoly Malykhin claims third title after dominant finish of Reinier de Ridder

ONE Championship returned Friday with its first visit to Qatar – and three title fights at the top of the lineup to celebrate the occasion.

In the main event, light heavyweight champion Reinier de Ridder met Anatoly Malykhin in a rematch. Malykhin knocked out de Ridder in December 2022 to win the heavyweight belt while de Ridder was a two-division champion.

In the co-feature, lightweight champion Kai Tang put his title on the line in a rematch with Thanh Le, whom he beat in August 2022 to win the belt. They were scheduled to meet in mid-2023, but a Tang injury forced the delay.

ONE Championship 166 took place at Lusail Sports Arena in Al Masrouhiya, Qatar. Check out the results below.

Keito Yamakita def. Jeremy Miado

In the opening bout, Keito Yamakita (9-1) worked his magic on the ground and kept rolling with Jeremy Miado (10-7), no matter how Miado tried to work his way out of Yamakita’s choke attempts. But Yamakita wrapped up a bulldog choke and when he used the fence to tighten it, it forced Miado to tap at the 4:04 mark of the first round. Yamakita got back in the win column after a January loss and got his first submission finish since June 2021.

Shinji Suzuki vs. Han Zi Hao

In a bantamweight muay Thai bout, Shinji Suzuki landed a second-round knockdown and rolled to a unanimous decision over longtime ONE fighter Han Zi Hao.

Zakaria El Jamari vs. Ali Saldoev

Early in the second, Ali Saldoev landed a perfect punch to the body and followed it up with a left hand on the button against Zakaria El Jamari for a KO in a 138-pound muay Thai bout.

Osamah Almarwai vs. Cleber Sousa

Cleber Sousa got opportunistic. He jumped for his finish, got the triangle choke position on the canvas, secured an arm, then got Osamah Almarwai to tap in their flyweight submission grappling bout.

Zafer Sayik vs. Vladimir Kuzmin

Zafer Sayik took a decision from Vladimir Kuzmin in a 148-pound muay Thai bout in which Kuzmin lost a point for a yellow card illegal strike.

Zuhayr Al-Qahtani vs. Mehdi Zatout

Mehdi Zatout outworked Zuhayr Al-Qahtani for a unanimous decision in a 147-pound boxing bout to hand Al-Qahtani his first boxing loss. The fight was the pro boxing debut for Zatout.

Arjan Bhullar vs. Amir Aliakbari

Referee Herb Dean made things clear to former heavyweight champ Arjan Bhullar his fight against Amir Aliakbari. After repeated warnings from Dean that there needed to be more forward engagement, Dean issued Bhullar a yellow card early in the second round for continually backing up. A few minutes later, he pulled out the card again for another warning – each of which came with a 10 percent fine from Bhullar’s fight purse. He warned Bhullar at the start of the third that another warning would be a more severe punishment – which likely would be disqualification.

With 45 seconds left in the final round, Dean finally had seen enough. Even though Bhullar got a short reprieve earlier in the round for a low blow, Dean still deemed his actions after that as enough timidity to pull the red card out of his pocket for an immediate disqualification loss – no doubt a surprising scenario for a former champion to find himself in.

Jarred Brooks vs. Joshua Pacio

Strawweight (125 pounds for ONE) champion Jarred Brooks lost his title in a rematch against former champion Joshau Pacio by rare disqualification.

Brooks kicked high early and missed, but after a Pacio miss, Brooks spun quickly and took Pacio’s back. Pacio tried to throw him off and defended his neck, but Brooks stayed stuck to him and slammed him to the canvas head first. In ONE, a slam to the head, heck or spine is illegal. Replays showed Pacio landing head first, and because of that, referee Herb Dean ended the fight for a disqualification win for Pacio – meaning he won back the title, despite Brooks’ livid protests that his slam was legal.

Kai Tang vs. Thanh Le

Featherweight (155 pounds for ONE) champion Kai Tang hooked up with interim champion Thanh Le in a title unification bout in the co-main event that wasn’t going in any kind of exciting way early. Both fighters were warned for not enough action. But in the third, Le made a mistake and put his hands down, and Tang came forward with a bomb of a right hand that put Le on the canvas. He pounced on Le immediately and pounded him out for the 13th finish of his career. The win was Le’s 11th straight, and he unified the titles in the process. He also was given a $50,000 bonus immediately after the win for the stoppage.

Anatoly Malykhin vs. Reinier de Ridder

Anatoly Malykhin made ONE Championship history with a dominant performance against Reinier de Ridder to claim the middleweight (205 pounds) title and become a three-division champion, along with light heavyweight and heavyweight. Officially, the result goes down as a TKO at the 1:16 mark of Round 3, but what happened in the cage was Malykhin broke De Ridder’s spirit with his pressure throughout the fight.

De Ridder came out aggressively with this left hand in the first round, establishing a tone, but De Ridder did have some moments. Those moments dwindled in Round 2 as Malykhin kept De Ridder on his heels and against the cage, hammering away up top and to the body. When Malykhin opened Round 3 with the same aggression, it didn’t take long for De Ridder to shoot in for a lazy takedown that put him in position to absorb some ground-and-pound, including a few knees to the head. De Ridder threw one last desperation triangle attempt that Malykhin easily slipped out of and stood up to continue on the feet, but the sequence took too much out of De Ridder, who didn’t answer Herb Dean’s calls to stand up.

It’s the second time Malykhin has finished De Ridder as he took the light heavyweight belt with a first-round knockout in December 2022.

Story originally appeared on MMA Junkie