ONE Championship‘s reigning featherweight and lightweight world champion Martin “The Situ-Asian” Nguyen, 28, was born and raised in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. But the mixed martial artist is deeply attached to his Vietnamese roots.
On December 13, 2017, Nguyen took to Instagram to share a short clip of himself and his grandmother, 93. He referred to the moment as the highlight of his short Vietnam trip.
In the short clip, Nguyen kisses his grandmother. It is followed by a short conversation between the two in Vietnamese language.
“We are forever thankful,” Nguyen captioned the video. He added that his grandmother is “always dressing elegant and having a laugh” and is the same person since they last meet 10 years ago.
Before Nguyen was born, his parents fled from their home country Vietnam by way of Malaysia and Indonesia. The MMA fighter and his wife Brooke Nguyen have three children named Kai Nguyen, Tiana Nguyen and Madison Nguyen.
Martin made a successful professional MMA debut on July 28, 2018 by submitting Richard Kemp-Hay via rear-naked choke in the third round. It was followed by three more wins by Martin over Thomas Ruderman, Luke Standing and the late Rocky Batolbatol from 2012 to 2014.
On September 27, 2015, Martin had his first loss when Marat Gafurov submitted him via rear-naked choke making the latter the ONE Featherweight World Champion. During their rematch on August 18, 2017, Martin knocked out Gafurov in the second round making him the new ONE Featherweight World Champion.
Three months later, Martin made history by dethroning former ONE Lightweight World Champion Eduard “Landslide” Folayang. On March 24, 2018, the Vietnamese-Australian MMA fighter will try to earn his third belt by challenging ONE Bantamweight World Champion Bibiano Fernandes.
CONAN Daily 