ONE: Global Rivals preview: Ben Askren promises to dominate Nikolay Aleksakhin
Ben Askren will defend his ONE Championship welterweight title in Pasay City this Friday against Nikolay Aleksakhin
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Your support makes all the difference.This Friday, ONE Championship will head to Pasay City, Philippines, for their event 'ONE: Global Rivals' with a card that will be headlined by a welterweight title fight featuring Ben Askren taking on Nikolay Aleksakhin.
Askren is the current ONE Welterweight World Champion and is considered by many to be one of the best welterweights in the world and has a record of 14-0 (1 NC). He has fought in ONE Championship since 2014 as is one of only a handful of Americans competing in the organisation right now. Speaking to the Independent yesterday, Askren spoke of his pride at representing America at the Global Rivals event this Friday.
"When I’m in Asia for ONE Championship I am one of the few American fighters. I definitely feel a responsibility to represent America well because there are not a lot of other American fighters in ONE," said Askren.
His opponent this Friday, Nikolay Aleksakhin, has won six fights in a row and represents stiff competition for Askren. The American, however, maintained he wasn't overly concerned.
He said: "You can look in my eyes, I’m honestly 100 per cent not concerned about anything Nikolay [Aleksakhin] brings to the table. He’s not an elite striker. I face strikers who are twice as good as him on a daily basis at practice.
"He is not as good of a wrestler as me. Hell, I’ll let him take me down! He can take me down all he wants because once we get on the ground he’s in my world."
Askren's last ONE Championship fight in the Philippines didn't quite go to plan and was stopped due to an eye poke and ruled a no contest. Askren is well aware this wasn't the performance he wanted to give the fans and is promising to give them a more satisfactory outcome this time around.
"I owe the Filipino fans. The last time I was in Manila obviously the bout didn’t have the outcome anyone wanted and my opponent was a lot less than courageous in faking his eye injury," said Askren.
"The Filipino fans were unfairly robbed of a good fight. They lost the main event that night. I have to do an extra dominant job on April 15th to make sure the Filipino fans get a fight made up to them that they lost out on last year.
“I’ve been training in Singapore for the past week and I can’t wait to get to Manila this Tuesday and kick some butts! I owe it to the fans and I will make sure I give them the best fight of the night!”
While Askren is supremely confident ahead of the fight on Friday, his opponent that evening, Aleksakhin, told the Independent this week he was far from afraid of the challenge ahead of him.
"Wrestling is [Ben Askren's] one and only strength, he is a boring fighter to watch. He has a very weak striking technique, I would like to play on that. I am a showman, I like exciting fighters and want to win beautifully," said the Russian.
"It is the most important fight in my career, so far. To win against Ben Askren means to move a level up and to demonstrate it to the whole world."
Askren and Aleksakhin are scheduled for a 5-round welterweight contest for the ONE Welterweight World Championship on top of a stacked card featuring some of ONE's biggest talents.
In the co-main event, Malaysia's top prospect Gianni Subba faces Geje Eustaquio in flyweight action, while Muin Gafurov faces Australian Reece McLaren in bantamweight action.
You can watch 'One: Global Rivals' at http://onefc.com/livestream. The full fight card is as follows...
'ONE: Global Rivals', Friday 15 April 2016 at 12.30PM BST
Ben Askren vs. N. Aleksakhin
Geje Eustaquio vs. Gianni Subba
Lowen Tynanes vs. Koji Ando
Muin Gafurov vs. Reece McLaren
Vaughn Donayre vs. Honorio Banario
April Osenio vs. Natalie Hills
Danny Kingad vs. Muhamad Haidar
Bernard Soriano vs. Sunoto Peringkat
Joshua Pacio vs. Rabin Catalan
Martin Nguyen vs. Kai Wen Li
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