After making history as ONE Championship’s first ever two-division champion, Martin Nguyen is set to make another record- to become the first ever three-division champion of the promotion. Behind the success and challenges of the Vietnamese-Australian mixed martial artist is his coach Fari Salievski.
Having dethroned Marat Gafurov of Russia and Eduard Folayang of the Philippines in 2017, Nguyen is currently the world champion of ONE Championship’s featherweight and lightweight divisions. On March 24, 2018, Nguyen will challenge ONE Bantamweight World Champion Bibiano Fernandes at “ONE: Iron Will.”
Aside from having a nutritionist to oversee his daily meals, Nguyen revealed that he invited a familiar face to his training camp as he tapped the services of McLaren. In December 2016, McLaren nearly defeated Fernandes for the ONE Bantamweight World Championship ultimately losing by a razor-thin split decision.
“We even had Reece down here for a sparring session, and he has given me some tips on how he thinks Bibiano competes,” Nguyen bared. “This was coach Fari Salievski’s idea. He was like, ‘Bibiano has faced Reece before and we thought Reece won. So let’s get him down here and get his opinion’ and it worked out in our favor.”
With a tall order in front of him at “ONE: Iron Will,” Nguyen is confident that he is capable in cracking the code to defeat Fernandes. The reigning ONE Featherweight and Lightweight World Champion said, “There is no pressure.”
“I am 100 percent confident in this win, and it is not a matter of how I am going to do it, but when I am going to do it,” Nguyen declared. “At the start of the match, I will have to weather the storm, but I will take him out from there.”
CONAN Daily 