ONE Championship CEO Chatri Sityodtong will be awarding a $50,000 “Warrior Bonus” at every event, with up to 5 bonuses in any night. The bonus will be distributed based on a fighter’s ‘gamenees’ which Sityodtong defines as, ‘ fighting every second of the fight to finish.’
ONE first introduced the idea of a Warrior Bonus back in 2014, but as of December’s ONE: Winter Warriors event, the promotion will be guaranteeing at least one bonus per night. The bonus earners for Winter Warriors were lightweight contenders Saygid “Dagi” Guseyn Arslanaliev and Timofey Nastyukhin as they put on a Fight of the Year performance.
Sityodtong spoke on Ariel Helwani’s ‘The MMA Hour’, “We’ve always given out $50,000 bonuses but it wasn’t every event, it was only if there were spectacular performances. But this year is the first year in which we will give out every single show several of these $50,000 bonuses.”
The news raised eyebrows around the industry, included ONE signed grappler Gordon Ryan, who posted to Instagram, “@yodchatri and @onechampionship keep stepping it up”
In Ryan’s comment section, Sityodtong clarified that the bonus would be available for all of ONE’s combat sports competitions, including submission grappling, “the $50,000 bonus applies to all types of martial arts competition in ONE, be it muay thai, kickboxing, mixed martial arts, submission grappling, etc.”
See Helwani’s full interview with Sityodtong below.
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