ONE Championship overturns close decision from Enter the Dragon

This past Friday morning in America, ONE Championship: Enter the Dragon went down in Singapore. It was a super exciting event overall that saw plenty of surprising upsets unfold. However, ONE has since overturned one of those outcomes.

Earlier this week, ONE CEO and Founder Chatri Sityodtong announced via Facebook that the ONE Super Series kickboxing featherweight world Grand Prix bout result between Petchmorakot Petchyindee and Giorgio Petrosyan would be overturned. The fight saw Petchyindee pull off the big upset victory by split decision.

“ONE Championship has conducted an official review of the controversial bout between Giorgio Petrosyan and Petchmorrakot Petchyindee at ONE: Enter The Dragon in Singapore,” Sityodtong said. “In fairness to all parties, the ONE Competition Committee has formally declared the bout a no contest. The referee did not adequately control the illegal clinching, resulting in multiple infractions during the bout.

“There will be an automatic rematch with the winner proceeding into the semifinals of the US$1m ONE Featherweight Kickboxing World Grand Prix.”

As one might imagine, this news didn’t sit too well with Petchyindee as he released a lengthy statement Wednesday on Instagram (via his manager, Boat Yindee) declaring he’ll be withdrawing from the tournament and will not compete in the suggested rematch.

“I apology to disappointed all the Thai fans from ONE Championship board’s decision that wants us to do the rematch with Giorgio Petrosyan with the reason that we broke the clinching rule.

“We all dedicated to this fight. Do everything we can, despite knowing that we are all inferior to him with the rules of kickboxing; do not use elbow and limit of knee. But we chose to fight because we want win this challenge. I want to repeat that we didn’t choose to fight because of 32 million baht; because no one knows how much money this tournament will have until 3 days before press conference. The only reasons that I decided to join this tournament because I like challenging and wanted to make Thai people proud. Petrosyan has almost hundred times of experience, but Petchmorakot only fought once with this rules.

“However, we still fight without any negotiation. We agreed to fight the best kick-boxer in spite of subsidiary in everything.

“I feel very pity to Petchmorakot, he really do everything for this victory. Practice so hard for 2 months, ran almost 40 kilometers from Suvanbhumi Airport to Royal monument King Chulalongkorn as a promised if he win. Tomorrow he will ordain into the Buddhist monkhood in hoping of this victory. Do everything as good as one person can do to prove himself to the world to see.

“We believe that all is not our fault. The problem is that the One Championship kickboxing rules are unclear, and the previous fight decision has ended. So we should get into the semifinals according to the right to deserve.

“But when the board of directors resolved to pass the fight with no contest and must rematch immediately, despite all that is not our fault. I am as the representative of the Petchmorakot Petchyindee Academy request to withdraw from World Grand Prix, because even if we agree to rematch and this happen again, Petrosyan’s fans will not accept the decision and there’s do way to win.

“Thank you for all your encouragement and apologies again, causing all Thai people to be disappointed.”

Because of this controversy, it’s safe to assume Petchyindee probably won’t be fighting for ONE again.

Fighters who were also on that card that suffered upset losses include Nieky Holzken who competed in the evening’s co-main event where he was bested by Regian Eersel via unanimous decision.

‘The Natural’ also had some comments in regard to that situation as well as his own.

https://www.instagram.com/p/Bxwm5xkA9Gz/

“I got tagged alot today about my last fight @onechampionship after @giorgiopetrosyan gets the no contest…its about the 2th round knockdown…. .thx fans around the world. #justice” Holzken’s post read.

ONE’s next event, ONE Hero Series May takes place this upcoming Monday in Beijing, China.

on 5/23/2019