The ONE Championship lightweight division could see one high profile mixed martial artist in the mix with Eddie Alvarez reportedly close to signing on the dotted line. Should this materialize, things should become interesting in the division where Martin Nguyen reigns as the current champion.
Word of such comes from Ariel Herwani of ESPN, claiming that Alvarez is close to signing a multi-fight deal with ONE after becoming a free agent last July. He made history when he won both the Bellator and UFC titles before he stumbled on several roadblocks along the way, Manila Bulletin Sports said.
Alvarez made the jump to the UFC in 2014 and had his share of ups and downs. He drew attention in 2016 after scoring a TKO over Rafael Dos Anjos to win the UFC lightweight belt. He would eventually lose the same title to Conor McGregor at UFC 205.
He last fought in July, facing Dustin Poirier at UFC on Fox 30. He lost via TKO in the second round.
Since then, all has been quiet on what lies ahead for Alvarez before Herwani made that surprise announcement on Twitter. Prior to that, ONE Championship boss Chatri Sityodtong had also hinted of a major signing in the works although he did not get into specifics on social media as well.
The coming weeks should be interesting with most keeping tabs if Alvarez is indeed headed to ONE FC. If it does go down, he joins an interesting division filled with gifted mixed martial artists.
Among the familiar names outside Nguyen include Eduardo Folayang and Honorio Banario of the Philippines, Amir Khan of Singapore, EV Ting of New Zealand and Shinya Aoki of Japan. Should Alvarez come, it should make the ONE FC lightweight division a pretty interesting moving forward.
While that remains to be seen, ONE Championship has lined up a couple of matches at ONE: Heart of the Lion to be held in Singapore on Nov. 9.
One match will see Kota Shimoshi of Osaka, Japan take on Adrian Pang of Queensland, Australia. Another lightweight card set for Singapore is the one involving Sung Jong Lee of Cheonan, South Korea who will face Garry Tonon of New Jersey, USA.
The main event for ONE: Heart of a Lion will have reigning ONE Women’s Strawweight World Champion “The Panda” Xiong Jing Nan of China defending her title against ONE Women’s Atomweight World Champion “Unstoppable” Angela Lee of Singapore.
Also, the co-main event will see reigning ONE Bantamweight World Champion Bibiano “The Flash” Fernandes of Brazil defending his title against ONE Interim Bantamweight World Champion Kevin “The Silencer” Belingon of the Philippines in a highly-anticipated bantamweight title unification bout.
