The ONE Super Series bout between Petchmorakot Petchyindee Academy, 25, of Thailand and Giorgio “Doctor” Petrosyan, 33, of Italy at “ONE: Enter the Dragon” was officially declared a No Contest on March 22, 2019. ONE Championship announced an automatic rematch between the two but the Thai contender did not accept it.
On May 17, 2019, Petchmorakot defeated Petrosyan via split decision in the quarter-finals of the ONE Featherweight Kicboxing World Grand Prix at “ONE: Enter the Dragon” at the Singapore Indoor Stadium in Kallang, Singapore. But upon reviewing the fight, the competition committee of ONE Championship formally declared the bout a no contest because referee Atsushi Onari did not adequately control the illegal clinching.
Right after ONE Championship’s announcement of the reversal of the result, Petchyindee Academy owner Nuttadaj Vachirarattanawong released a statement in Thai explaining why they are withdrawing from the automatic rematch. Here is the English translation of the full statement:
| I apologize to all of the Thai fans who were disappointed by the decision of ONE Championship, asking us to do a rematch with Giorgio Petrosyan with the reason that we broke the clinching rule. We are all dedicated to this fight. We did everything we can, despite knowing that we are all inferior to him with the rules of kickboxing, which prohibits the use of elbow and limits the use of knee. But we chose to fight because we want to win this challenge. I want to repeat that we did not choose to fight because of 32 million baht because no one knows how much money this tournament will have until 3 days before press conference. The only reason why I decided to join this tournament was because I like challenges and I wanted to make Thai people proud. Petrosyan has almost a hundred kickboxing bouts but Petchmorakot only fought once with these rules. Nevertheless, we still fought without any negotiating. We agreed to fight the best kickboxer in spite of being the underdog in all aspects. I feel very sorry to Petchmorakot. He really did everything for this victory. He practice really hard for two months, ran almost 40 kilometers from Suvanbhumi Airport to the royal monument of King Chulalongkorn. Tomorrow, he will be ordained as a Buddhist monk as he promised if he would win. He will do everything as a good person to prove himself for the world to see. We believe that it is not all our fault. The problem is that the ONE Championship kickboxing rules are unclear and the previous fight decision has ended. We should get into the semifinals according to the rules but the board of directors decided to declare the fight as a No Contest and demanded an automatic rematch although it was not all our fault. As the representative of the Petchmorakot Petchyindee Academy, I request to withdraw from the ONE Featherweight Kickboxing World Grand Prix because even if we agree to do the rematch and this happens again, Petrosyan’s fans will not accept the decision so there is no way for us to win anyway. Thank you for all your encouragement and my apologies again for causing all Thai people to be disappointed.” |
CONAN Daily 