ONE Championship fan-favorite “Reug Reug” will
still be vying for the heavyweight title in November.
Per sources close to the situation, Oumar Kane
(6-1 MMA, 0-0 KB) will be adding another matchup to his calendar
this year. At
ONE Fight Night 23 on July 5, “Reug Reug” will be battling
Senegalese influence Boucher Ketchup under kickboxing rules. The
two big men, who share a history with one another as popular laamb
wrestlers, will duke it out for three three-minute rounds at
Lumpinee Stadium in Bangkok. As first reported by Sportskeeda,
the heavyweights challenged one another on a live broadcast of
221 Live
on Tuesday, a show about laamb wrestling.
This will be the kickboxing debut for the 32-year-old training out
of 971 MMA. “Reug Reug” entered into MMA in 2019, where he crushed
Sofiane
Boukichou early into the second round. This lone win propelled
him into the roster of ONE Championship, where he went on to crush
Alain
Ngalani and Patrick
Schmid in 2021 to put himself on the map. While he fell short
to Kirill
Grishenko three weeks after bludgeoning Schmid, Kane has
rattled off three straight wins to earn a crack at gold. Most
recently, the former wrestler claimed a unanimous decision over
grappling star Marcus
Almeida. Regardless of the outcome against Ketchup, Kane will
still be facing Anatoly
Malykhin for the ONE heavyweight MMA strap.
Like his opponent, this will be the first appearance in a
kickboxing ring for Ketchup. The social media influencer born in
Dakar, Senegal, and now living in the Bronx, New York, is no
stranger to combat sports. Ketchup started in the Senegalese
national sport of wrestling, as did Kane. In 2022, Ketchup engaged
in an amateur MMA bout against a competitor with the given name of
Dieuf-Dieul, and he picked up the decision victory.