After Sage Northcutt was knocked out in 29 seconds to Cosmo Alexandre in his ONE Championship debut, Deadspin headlined an article calling the Asian promotion minor leagues. However, former UFC fighter and current Vice President of ONE Championship in Miesha Tate says that is no true and drew the comparison to the UFC.
“Definitely not minor league. It is just not very well known yet in the States. But, I think that’s changing,” Tate said. “To say minor league, I mean do we have to draw the comparisons. Right now, ONE Championship is 3-1 in our favor if you want to talk about athletes trading.
“Look everybody knows the UFC is the brand to compete with right now. Especially in the Western market, not so much Asia. We have four athletes so far have either come from the UFC or went to the UFC, one of which (Ben Askren) went over and won controversially,” she continued. “We have Eddie Alvarez and Sage losing and then Demetrious. Okay, Demetrious Johnson has been the most dominant and pound-for-pound world champion in UFC history. He barely lost to an Olympic gold medalist. Asked to be released went over to ONE Championship and had an extremely close first round in his debut and then he got the submission in the second round. He is one of the best to ever to do it.
“If you want to talk about minor league, the athletes there are far from minor league. We have 130 world champions on our roster, they are badass,” Tate added. “I don’t know what else to say. Watch it. If you think it is minor league. If you want to be entertained watch ONE Championship. We have a 70 percent finish rate. 40 percent is average here in the Western market. So just tune in, your mind will be changed very quickly.”
