ONE Championship announces starting dates for flyweight, lightweight tournaments

In November, ONE Championship announced that it will it be promoting a flyweight and lightweight Grand Prix in the New Year.

On Friday morning, ONE Championship Chairman and CEO Chatri Sityodtong took to Twitter to announce the kickoff dates for these two anticipated tournaments.

Per Sityodtong’s Tweet, the lightweight Grand Prix will kick off at ONE: Call to Greatness on February 22 in Singapore. The flyweight Grand Prix, meanwhile, will begin at ONE: A New Era on March 31, when ONE Championship debuts in Tokyo Japan.

https://twitter.com/YODCHATRI/status/1073207435219722241

“SAVE THE DATE: The ONE Lightweight World Grand Prix kicks off on February 22 in Singapore, and the ONE Flyweight World Grand Prix commences on March 31 in Tokyo!” – Chatri Sityodtong.

The star of the ONE Championship lightweight Grand Prix is undeniably former UFC and Bellator lightweight champion Eddie Alvarez, who signed with the promotion earlier this year.

“I had the same reaction you guys did,” Alvarez told BJPENN.com moments after this tournament was announced. “I’ve been a tournament fighter my whole life. I heard it for the first time when you guys heard it. I’m excited. I’ve never lost a fight tournament.”

Eddie Alvarez will likely be joined in the lightweight Grand Prix by stars like reigning champ Eduard Folayang, former champ Shinya Aoki, Ev Ting, Timofey Nastyukhin, and Saygid Guseyn Arslanaliev.

The biggest name in the ONE Championship flyweight Grand Prix will be former UFC flyweight champion Demetrious Johnson, who remains one of the pound-for-pound best fighters alive.

“It’s going to be a little bit different, because there’s going to be eight people instead of four,” Demetrious Johnson told BJPENN.COM after the tournament was announced, comparing it to the four-man UFC tournament he competed in years ago. “So it’s definitely 100 percent different. And it’s different [because] it might be in a cage, it might be a ring, so it’s definitely 100 percent different.”

Demetrious Johnson is likely to be joined in this tournament by names like champ Geje Eustaquio, former champs Kairat Akhmetov and Adriano Moraes, and surging contender Danny Kingad.

Stay tuned for more info on the ONE Championship lightweight and flyweight Grand Prix tournaments as they emerge.

This article first appeared on BJPENN.COM on 12/13/2018.