Before three world championship bouts finish the evening at ONE Friday Fights 46, a bantamweight Muay Thai showdown will go down inside Lumpinee Boxing Stadium on Friday, Dec. 22.
Scotland’s Nico Carrillo has put together back-to-back TKO victories in the weekly series, but he’ll face his biggest test to date against Nong-O Hama.
The former bantamweight king wants to reclaim his throne, but Carrillo is hoping to build his name off of the legend and move up on the global stage. Though, he understands just how daunting the task will be on Friday.
“So, his strengths are everything. Letting him get his momentum is probably his biggest strength. He’s quite hard to stop once you let him get going. His IQ is probably one of the best in the world for the last decade or two. He’s an amazing puncher, kicker, everything. He’s all-rounded. He’s amazing. His IQ though is the main thing,” Carrillo told ONE Championship.
The “King of the North” believes he has found some weaknesses in the Thai veteran’s game that he feels he can take advantage of when the bell rings. The Deachkalek Muay Thai Academy and Sor Dechapan athlete sees some defensive lapses that may leave a window open for him to shock the world.
“When he’s getting boxed, he doesn’t try to get out of the way of the shots. He just waits for them to be over, so that he can then throw them back. And, then, when he does, he lunges in with his hands down. So, there’s lots of little stuff that on Dec. 22 I’m going to be sure to exploit,” Carrillo pointed out.
In order to prepare for a career-changing bout, Carrillo moved to Thailand for his full fight camp, leaving behind his loved ones to make the most out of a golden opportunity.
The massive event is not lost on the King of the North, and he understands this is his chance to break out and break through in a major way, as he puts the ONE bantamweight Muay Thai title in his crosshairs.
“The scale of the fight, the magnitude of the fight, is absolutely massive, and a lot of people would go into a fight like this with the mindset of, ‘I’ve nothing to lose. It’s Nong-O.’ That just isn’t my mindset. I’ve got everything to lose. Because, in this game, it’s snakes and ladders. You lose one fight, and you’ve got to work your way back up to the top, so that’s in my mind,” Carrillo admitted.
“Obviously, beating Nong-O would put me down, arguably, as one of the best foreign Muay Thai fighters ever – apart from Haggerty, which is also in my mind. Then it’s off to him to prove who the best ever foreign Muay Thai fighter is in history. Is it me or is it Haggerty? And I’m not looking past Nong-O, because I know I’ve got a massive task at hand, but the day I signed with ONE Championship, I had gold on my mind.”
ONE Friday Fights 46 airs live on global pay-per-view for $39.99 on Friday, Dec. 22. The action begins on watch.onefc.com at 7:30 a.m. EST/4:30 a.m. PST.