Interview With Fight photographer John Walsh

In this special holiday episode of the Asian MMA podcast, I sit down with Asian based fight photographer John Walsh.

John Walsh is the co-founder of California based MMA news site The Clinch Report. While he started his career covering the talent-rich MMA scene of California, he moved to Asia a few years back to expand his horizons and quickly fell in love with the off the wall nature of the Asian MMA fight scene.

John talks about some of the odder events he has shot, the amazing talent he has come across in the region and how some of the more outlandish things he has photographed have far surpassed any expectations he had.

We talk about everything from MMA to Muay Thai, Kickboxing, Boxing and even armature wrestling.

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The Impact of The ONE Championship TV deal with TNT on US App users - ROAD FC Lightweight Tournament Final Set and the return of Kotetsu Boku

Today we are revisiting the coverage of the ONE Championship TV deal in the US, specifically how it will impact the ONE app users in the states.

Which is something that listener Kennedy Serafica asked me over on YouTube.

I looked into this a bit more, and when Chatri was on Ariel Helwanis show he had indicated that the app would no longer be free in the US at some point next year.

I reached out to some of my contacts at ONE to ask for clarification and it seems as though the app will no longer be available in the US after January 1st because Turner Broadcasting will have exclusive broadcast rights in US market.

It will be interesting to see if ONE follows this same strategy with other western markets as they continue to negotiate TV deals. 2019 will most likely give us a better view of that.
If you are a US user of the app, keep in mind that you have many mobile VPN options available to you… Just saying.

In other news ROAD FC has confirmed that ROAD FC 52 on February 23rd of next year will be the finals of their $1 Million dollar lightweight tournament where Shamil Zavurov and Mansour Barnaoui will fight for a shot at reigning lightweight champ Kwon A-Sol and the US$1 million purse that is up for grabs.

It’s been a great tournament and that cash prize at the level that ROAD FC is at for a promotion is fantastic. And that's the type of stuff that makes Asian MMA interesting, we have all this fringe stuff going on that you just wouldn’t see in something like the UFC or probably not even in Bellator.
And also soccer kicks and knees to the head… come one now.

Lastly, for this episode ONEs first show of 2019 will see the return of one of my favorite fighters, Kotetsu Boku aka No Face as he takes one Bruno Pucci. He hasn’t fought since a brutal knockout by suplex at the hands of Christian Lee back in December of 2017 in Bangkok.

I was cage side at that event and Christan slammed him one section of cage away from me and you could see Boku stiffen right up, at one point it looked like he was having a seizure. Even if you watch the video of that fight, ONE does a great job not to show the doctor attending to Boku but you can see everyone looking over at him. They took him out on a stretcher as a precaution, but he ended up being ok in the end. I saw him back at the fighter's hotel that same night.

I am super excited to see him back in action, and I am really happy that he took this much time off before fighting again after a KO like that. I would love to see that be more of a norm for fighters.

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ONE Championship Gets TV Deal with TNT, Signs Sexyama and Sage Northcutt, Muay Thai in the olympics

First things first, In big news that isn’t MMA related but is MMA related is that Muay Thai, the art of eight limbs has been granted provisional recognition as an Olympic sport. For me, this is both potentially good and bad.

In Asian MMA Muay Thai is a very common base discipline for a lot of fighters, especially here in Thailand, so it’s exciting to see another avenue for fighters to develop through. That being said, anyone who has ever seen a single muay Thai match, knows it’s beautifully violent in a way that the Olympics isn’t.

That bring up a lot of fear that the OIC might look to turn Muay Thai into something similar to TKD where fighters come out heavily padded and it becomes more of a points game instead of brutal leg kicks and flesh-slicing elbows.

I personally like my Muay Thai primal and devastating, not Olympic TV friendly.
Now since the last show ONE had two significant signings, or at least high profile. One being Sexyama and the other being Sage Northcutt.

Akiyama makes a lot of sense for ONE, he is half Japanese half Korean, two markets that ONE would like to dominate and he has a fairly good record at 14 and 6 but has not fought since November of 2015. So by the time he steps in the ONE cage, we could be looking at 4 years away from the sport. He’s still a marketable guy and I think he will do well with ONE from more than a just fighting perspective.

Sage Northcutt on the other hand. He has a good record at this point in his career at 11 and 2 with 8 fights in the UFC but He really doesn’t fit the whole “Asian superheroes” model that we here Chatri Sityodtong talking about. He is pretty much as white bread as they come, so I found that a bit odd.

DJ and Eddie Alverez, I can actually see, but with Sage, I have a harder time getting behind the idea of him adding value to ONE.

That being said, he has a look that will really stand out in Asia, and he has become well known in the states so that could be part of the big picture for ONE, we will have to wait and see how that goes.
And to that point, ONE has inked a 3 year deal with TNT broadcasting in the states that will see ONE championship break into the US airwaves.

Apparently, the deal will include 24 live events on Turner Sports digital platform B/R Live and TNT will air taped events as well as a possible reality show.

The first live event will be ONEs January 19th event from Jakarta, Eternal Glory, where the strawweight strap will be on the line as Joshua Pacio defends against Hayato Suzuki.

Over the weekend at ROAD FC 51 Ham Seo-Hee retained her woman's Atomweight strap against a game Park Jeong-Eun via UD.

This is ROADs last event for 2018, with all the changes afoot in the Asian MMA universe it will be interesting to see what they have in store for 2019.

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