The internationally acclaimed sport IP-ONE Championship will host the ONE 162 major martial arts event on Friday evening 21 October at the Axiata Stadium in Kuala Lumpur. The main event of the night was led by "Chinese fighting talents" Zhang Peimian and Jonathan Di Bella, who will compete for the strawweight kickboxing world title.
In addition, 39-year-old strawweight former world champion Alex Silva will also challenge the current fourth-ranked Greco-Roman wrestling champion Gustavo Balart.
Silva debuted in ONE Championship in 2012 and has been fighting in the Circle for a decade. The Copa do Mundo World Champion defeated Yoshitaka Naito to claim the strawweight world title in December 2017. At the age of 39, Silva is still setting a new martial arts record.
In March, Silva lost to "Papuan Bad Boy" Adrian Mattheis. The match refreshed Silva's perception, and although he almost finished his opponent in the first round with his superb jiu-jitsu, Mattis used his willpower to drag the fight to the second round, finishing the knockout with heavy punches just 5 seconds after the bell rang. Silva doesn't think he lost the fight, but it did give him a new understanding of the ONE Championship ring and start training harder.
This year's ONE 158 event was followed by a rematch with Adrian Matisse and avenged with a heel hook, taking only 3 minutes and 34 seconds to submit to the "Papuan Bad Boy" to prove that he is not old.
The match earned Silva a $50,000 Best Match bonus, and it also gave Silva his 12th victory and ninth submission in his mixed martial arts career. With this statistic, Silva tied the record of 9 submissions in the cage held by Jiu-Jitsu geek Aoki Shinya.
Silva is going to challenge Gustavo Bharat, who is only 150 cm tall. Balratt, a three-time Pan American Greco-Roman Wrestling Champion, a silver medal at the 2010 Greco-Roman Wrestling World Cup, and a semi-final at the 2012 Summer Olympics, reached the quarterfinals of the London Summer Olympics. After leaving the Olympics, Balat chose to come to the mixed martial arts arena, earning the nickname "Gladiator" for his immense strength and wrestling skills.
After entering the cage, Bharat started flyweight fighting, but his height affected his performance, so he dropped his weight to strawweight. In the new division, Bharat defeated Ryuto Sawada and overwhelmed former champion Yosuke Saruta with a tiger-like swing to move into fourth in the strawweight division.
His opponent Silva has been fighting ONE Championship for a decade, putting in many classic submission scenes, having defeated Chinese fighter Miao Litao in three rounds by subduing Chinese fighter Peng Xuewen with a cross. So whether or not he is on the rankings, the 39-year-old veteran is the most dangerous fighter in the strawweight division.
And for Silva, if he can submit his opponent to win this match, it will set a new record!