ONE Championship has had a year to remember, but the last few weeks have been exceptional.
Fans got to see ONE Friday Fights 34 on September 22, a night highlighted by the long-awaited clash between ONE Flyweight Muay Thai World Champion Rodtang “The Iron Man” Jitmuangnon and kickboxing king Superlek “The Kicking Machine” Kiatmoo9.
ONE Fight Night 14: Stamp vs. Ham followed. It was an event in which 10 of its 11 matches ended in finishes, including the main event where Stamp Fairtex made history as the first athlete to win three World Titles in just as many sports.
But the buzz of the town remains the titanic clash between Superlek and Rodtang, a match that more than lived up to the hype. After all, Superlek handed his Thai compatriot the first loss of his striking career in ONE Championship.
The fight certainly caught the attention of everyone, including famous MMA personality Joe Rogan.
“Out of all the combat sports out there, Muay Thai has the biggest untapped potential in the Western world,” Rogan wrote on Instagram after the fight.
“The talent is there, the excitement is off the charts. It’s just going to take the right organization with deep pockets to make it as huge as it deserves to be over here.”
Though he’s commentating in a rival company, Rogan has always supported ONE Championship, speaking about it every chance he gets on his uber-popular podcast, The Joe Rogan Experience.
But that fandom took different heights when Superlek and Rodtang took centerstage that momentous night inside Lumpinee Boxing Stadium. Rogan praised ONE for pitting “two masters of the art” against each other.
That’s why ONE Chairman and CEO Chatri Sityodtong is open to having Rogan on board as a commentator – if he wants to experience what it’s like calling high-level Muay Thai bouts.
“Joe, you and I know each other – come on any time, man,” Sityodtong told SCMP after ONE Fight Night 14.
“If you want to commentate in the #1 league by far in Muay Thai – absolute killers and monsters, which you already know, Joe – give me a call.”
The Numbers Back It Up
ONE’s previous two weeks have been so massive, and the metrics are backing it up.
On the ONE Championship Philippines Facebook page – just one of the many ONE channels that streamed the show – ONE Friday Fights 34 reached 8.1 million views, with viewership peaking at half a million during the main event.
Though it happened early in the morning in U.S. time, it still trended #2 on X – even beating WWE’s Friday Night Smackdown in the social media space.
Looking at it on a larger scale, ONE has dominated organic video views when compared to the four major combat sports organizations in the world, while ranking second only to the UFC in organic engagements and followers.
The 6,078 million viewership number tops the big four, beating out the UFC’s 4,449 million. ONE’s engagements and followers followed suit, at 321 million and 76M, respectively.
Sityodtong is certainly happy to see that with the company’s growth, the sport that he loves and grew up practicing is growing with it.
“I used to think no one would appreciate Muay Thai the way I do, but I realized people appreciate watching the best of the best go at it. If you go out to finish the fight – not pitter patter – with unbelievably high-level technique, people appreciate it,” Sityodtong said.
“People definitely see the level difference of our strikers versus a UFC striker, it’s not even close. Even our MMA strikers – Stamp Fairtex is much, much crisper and cleaner than 99.9 per cent of the roster of our competitors.”