Shinya Aoki is going to be headlining a ONE Fighting Championship show before the end of the year. After signing up Renato Sobral, Melvin Manhoef and Phil Baroni, the newest elite-level promotion to arrive on the MMA scene has now secured the services of the best lightweight not currently contracted to Zuffa.
Aoki has not left Dream but the Japanese promotion doesn’t have a show scheduled right now so he has had to look elsewhere to find fights. And where better to do that than the biggest MMA show operating in Asia right now?
Once Aoki has got his rematch with Eddie Alvarez at Bellator 66 out of the way, he will need to sit down with ONE FC matchmakers and decide who he is going to face. One problem is that the Dream Lightweight Champion trains at Evolve MMA in Singapore so Zorobabel Moreira and Eddie Ng are definitely out of the equation.
Aoki is the No. 1 pound-for-pound fighter in Asia at the moment and is the latest big name to get on board with ONE FC. His first fight for them is certain to generate plenty of headlines. Here are some of the fighters who might be in contention to face him.