Rich Franklin, Brandon Vera

ONE Championship is not only launching a new global super league called ONE Super Series. The Singapore-based promotion is also introducing a whole separate league called ONE Warrior Series.

ONE Super Series will be for world champions from all disciplines of martial arts. On the other hand, ONE Warrior Series is for rising stars that ONE Championship has discovered.

Similar to Travel Channel’s chef and TV personality Anthony Bourdain, ONE Championship Vice President Rich Franklin travels around all over Asia in a reality TV show to meet martial arts masters. While walking around, travelling and exploring the cities, the cultures, the food, the flavors and the history of every country, the former Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) fighter is also holding tryouts.

“What you’ll see from all these tryouts is that we’ll be selecting a handful of fighters from each country and they will be competing in a ONE Warrior Series Tournament,” ONE Championship CEO Chatri Sityodtong said. “So that is our league for rising stars, which is separate. We have ONE Championship, we have ONE Super Series for the world’s greatest strikers, and then we have ONE Warrior Series which is about finding the rising stars.”

According to Sityodtong, ONE Super Series will first start as an embedded part of ONE Championship shows. But eventually, both ONE Super Series and ONE Warrior Series will become standalone events, he announced.

The first actual tournament with ONE Warrior Series with the rising stars of Asia will take place in March 2018. The exact date will soon be announced by Franklin, according to Sityodtong.

On the other hand, ONE Super Series will take place many times a year, ideally every month minimum as a standalone event in the future, Sityodtong said. He added, “I don’t want to make any promises for this year because we have 24 events, but as ONE Championship scales to 52 events a year over the next few years, then you’ll see a big portion of that will be dedicated to the ONE Super Series.”

Meanwhile, here is a short interview with Sityodtong about the partnership between ONE Championship and Global Citizen: