MANILA, Philippines–After hardly breaking any sweat in his first four ONE Championship fights, heavyweight world champion Brandon Vera is expected to finally find himself in a dogfight against Aung La N Sang in the light heavyweight division.
Aung La, the light heavyweight and middleweight king, hands down will be Vera’s toughest opponent since he signed with ONE Championship in 2014.
And that’s also why Vera wanted the fight in the first place as well as to become a two-division world champion.
A slimmed down Brandon Vera says he’s moving down in weight to challenge Aung La Naang for the ONE light heavyweight world title. pic.twitter.com/fq2WoFQjwh
— Mark Giongco (@MarkGiongcoINQ) March 31, 2019
“It’s always been a dream [to become] a two-weight champion and who better to compete against than Mr. Aung La N Sang,” Vera told Filipino reporters Sunday at Ryogoku Kokugikan in Tokyo, Japan.
Vera was in Tokyo for ONE: A New Era, the promotion’s biggest and inaugural event in Japan.
“He represents his country well, represents himself well, he’s very, very humble and there’s no quit in that guy. All of his fights go five rounds so I’m very excited to see how that turns out and be able to compete at light heavyweight.”
The 41-year-old Vera said shedding off pounds has never been a problem for him. In fact, he’s already lost close to 20 pounds since his last fight four months ago when he knocked out Mauro Cerilli.
“I’ve already started my descent down with my weight so that I could start preparing and training for that weight class,” he said.
“It’s easy for me to make the weight. I can cut down from 250 down to whatever I need to but to compete at that weight is something totally different so I need to start doing it now and not 12 weeks or eight weeks before the fight.”
The bout between Vera and Aung La will be among the main bouts of ONE’s second show in Japan scheduled this October.
All of Vera’s four fights under the ONE banner have ended in the opening round. Aung La, on the other hand, is on a six-fight streak after stopping Ken Hasegawa in the second round of their rematch on Sunday to keep his middleweight belt.