Hu Yong, Akbar Abdullaev crash ONE Championship’s MMA rankings

There has been a fresh new update to ONE Championship’s Athlete Rankings.

After a couple of breakout performances in the last two events, two different MMA weight classes underwent some glaring changes.

The top of the flyweight MMA division was left untouched, but Hu Yong clawed his way into the fifth and final spot with an extraordinary showing at ONE Fight Night 15 on Prime Video this past October 6.

Hu hardly broke a sweat against Eko Roni Saputra. In the bout, the Chinese spitfire only needed 63 seconds to dispatch his Indonesian opponent by TKO.

His rousing performance was more than enough to garner himself a seat in the top five, knocking off Chinese compatriot Xie Wei.

This is what the flyweight MMA rankings look like now:

• Champion: Demetrious Johnson
• #1: Adriano Moraes
• #2: Danny Kingad
• #3: Reece McLaren
• #4: Yuya Wakamatsu
• #5: Hu Yong (NR)

Meanwhile, the featherweight MMA rankings looked quite different after Thanh Le captured the interim crown by submitting Ilya Freymanov with a heel hook in the first round at ONE Fight Night 15 on Prime Video.

This allowed Garry Tonnon to move to the #1 contender’s slot, while Freymanov landed at #2 despite the heartbreaking loss to Le.

Furthermore, Martin Nguyen and Shamil Gasanov climbed up to the #3 and #4 positions, respectively.

The shakeup paved the way for Akbar Abdullaev to take over the #5 spot following back-to-back TKO victories earlier this year.

This is what the featherweight MMA rankings look like now:

• Champion: Tang Kai
• Interim Champion: Thanh Le
• #1: Garry Tonon (+1)
• #2: Ilya Freymanov (+1)
• #3: Martin Nguyen (+1)
• #4: Shamil Gasanov (+1)
• #5: Akbar Abdullaev (NR)

New contenders enter ONE Championship’s Muay Thai rankings

Both featherweight and bantamweight Muay Thai divisions saw new entries as well.

“Smokin” Jo Nattawut punched his ticket to secure the #4 post in the featherweight Muay Thai rankings. On the other hand, Nico Carrillo broke into the bantamweight Muay Thai top five, earning the #5 spot.

The featherweight kickboxing rankings also experienced some major movements as Tawanchai PK Saenchai improved to #4, causing Giorgio Petrosyan to fall to #5.

An independent panel of sports media members and industry experts determines the ONE Athlete Rankings. Following each live event, they rank the fighters based on their most recent performances and the quality of competition.