A car accident delayed it. A war of words followed. Now, six months later than originally planned, Oumar \u201cReug Reug\u201d Kane finally gets to prove he is the real deal.<\/p>\n
Kane<\/a> puts the ONE Heavyweight MMA World Title on the line for the first time against former three-division ONE MMA World Champion Anatoly \u201cSladkiy\u201d Malykhin in the main event of The Inner Circle<\/a>, streaming live for members at live.onefc.com from Lumpinee Stadium in Bangkok, Thailand on Friday, May 15. The 33-year-old Senegalese champion holds a 7-1 MMA record and five consecutive wins heading into this rematch. The pair first met at ONE 169 in November 2024, where Kane ended Malykhin\u2019s undefeated run with a split decision win to become the first African-born ONE World Champion and hand the Russian the first loss of his career.<\/p>\n Their originally scheduled ONE 173 rematch fell apart when Kane was involved in a car accident weeks before fight night. Malykhin publicly questioned his rival\u2019s commitment. Kane dismissed it and kept training. Now the fight is here, and Kane has spent the extra months making himself a harder problem to solve.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ve changed everything, made upgrades in every skill set. The new Oumar is coming. You can expect me to be stronger, more powerful \u2014 and faster. At the same time, I think Anatoly is going to be better also. I expect him to be a lot better compared to our first fight. It would be wrong to underestimate him,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n \u201cI know him inside and out now. It\u2019s going to be an easy fight for me. I know who Anatoly is after fighting him in the ring. I know his movement \u2014 I know everything.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Oumar Kane has noticed Malykhin go quiet<\/p>\n Oumar Kane is not just preparing to win. He is preparing to settle the argument in a way that leaves no room for dispute.<\/p>\n Malykhin arrives as the reigning ONE Middleweight and ONE Light Heavyweight MMA World Champion with a 14-1 professional record. The sole loss belongs to Kane. The Russian has said little in the buildup, and Kane has a read on exactly why that is.<\/p>\n \u201cHe\u2019s quiet now because he knows I\u2019m the better fighter. He\u2019s not talking now because he\u2019s scared. That\u2019s the honest truth,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n \u201cDon\u2019t get me wrong, he\u2019s a good fighter. But after facing him, now I know we\u2019re not on the same level. There\u2019s a big difference. Heading into this fight, I know that Anatoly and I are not on the same level. But still, I give him the respect he deserves. No doubt, he\u2019s a good fighter. But he still can\u2019t beat me. He will never beat me.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A car accident delayed it. A war of words followed. Now, six months later than originally planned, Oumar…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":214325,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[444],"tags":[49,48,641,638,1865,33754,82,242062],"class_list":["post-653240","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mma","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-fighting","tag-mma","tag-one-championship","tag-oumar-kane","tag-sports","tag-the-inner-circle"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/653240","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=653240"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/653240\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/214325"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=653240"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=653240"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=653240"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}