ONE Championship is pulling out all the stops for its debut card in Japan.
The premier mixed martial arts organization have put together a slambang ONE: A New Era fight night on March 31 that will see three world title defenses and the first appearance of ONE Championship’s two prized recruits.
Team Lakay bet Eduard Folayang is set to defend his ONE lightweight world title against the same person he stopped to get the crown in 2016.
Folayang will face Japanese icon Shinya Aoki in a long-awaited rematch for the belt four months after the Bagui0-native recaptured the lightweight throne with a unanimous decision win over Amir Khan.
Demetrious Johnson and Eddie Alvarez, the promotion’s biggest signings last year, are also scheduled to make their much-awaited debut in the ONE Championship cage.
Alvarez will face top lightweight contender Timofey Nastyukhin of Russia while Johnson, widely considered one of the best pound-for-pound fighters in history, will take on hometown bet Yuya Wakamatsu in the card.
In the other blockbuster title bouts, Xiong Jing Nan faces challenger Angela Lee, who is looking for to become ONE’s first two-division champion, in the ONE women’s strawweight bout while Myanmar hero Aung La N Sang defends his middleweight strap against Ken Hasegawa out of Japan
The ONE Flyweight World Grand Prix will also kick off at ONE: A New Era with initial bouts yet to be announced.