Rising middleweight juggernaut Shamil Erdogan didn’t come to ONE Championship to make up the numbers. He wants to be the best, and that means doing whatever he has to in order to get a shot at the ONE middleweight MMA world championship.
The unbeaten powerhouse will look to utilise all his weapons when he meets former two-weight world champion Aung La N Sang at ONE 168: Denver on Saturday, September 7, inside Denver, Colorado’s Ball Arena. And he’s hoping another impressive will push his stock in the talent-laden division.
Erdogan began his martial arts journey wrestling in his homeland of Dagestan at the age of 12. His skills on the canvas quickly made him a regular on the podiums of competition around Russia, and he even earned a win over future three-weight titleholder Anatoly Malykhin.
The rising star achieved immense success in his bread-and-butter, but he soon realised that a move to MMA was the only logical step.
“In the beginning, I tried to mix wrestling with my MMA career, but the further I got, the more it became clear that I had to choose one or the other,” Erdogan said.
“I am grateful to wrestling for everything that it has given me, but my choice, even against the will of my father, was to go for MMA.”
Following his earth-shattering debut win against Fan Rong at ONE Friday Fights 22 in June last year, Erdogan was immediately placed into the upper echelon of the middleweight MMA division. And fans have been itching to see him again since.
He’ll face an undeniably difficult test against Aung La N Sang, but if he can overcome the Myanmar star, world title contention will surely follow.
That’ll be easier said than done, however. The former ONE middleweight and light heavyweight MMA world champions is on a three-fight winning streak dating back to 2022, and he has hopes of making one last run at the top in the world’s largest martial arts organisation.
Erdogan is well aware of his upcoming foe’s legacy, but he plans to score the win, add to his 9-0 professional slate, and book a showdown with an old rival for the middleweight MMA crown.
“Aung La N Sang is one of the best. He has a legacy. He was a two-weight champion in his time. My hope is that a win over him will open the door for me to a championship belt,” the 9-0 star said.
“I would like to face Anatoly Malykhin. I have a good relationship with him, and I know him from the times when we competed in freestyle wrestling. But he is now the champion in my weight class, and if it stays this way, our fight will be inevitable.”
