ONE Championship and UFC is the story of East and West in the MMA market

ONE Championship boss Victor Cui spoke candidly to the Independent about how his MMA organiastion is the equivalent of the UFC in the Eastern market and how they are building their success 

James Edwards
Tuesday 19 April 2016 10:09 BST
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A view of a ONE Championship event
A view of a ONE Championship event

Following a successful night in Manila last weekend, Victor Cui, CEO and owner of ONE Championship, spoke exclusively to the Independent about the development of the company and how they were building success in the continent in which mixed martial arts was born.

"You’ve got UFC as the biggest in the West and ONE Championship as the biggest in the East," said Cui.

"You see the storyline of East versus West play out in almost every industry you can think of, from Apple versus Samsung, YouTube versus Youku, Twitter versus Weibo, Facebook versus Renren. If you compare, UFC has got a 90-percent market share in the states. We’ve got a 90-percent market share in Asia.

"We’re filling the biggest stadiums. We’ve got the biggest gates, biggest attendance. We have a television reach of potentially 1 billion viewers. We’ve got fantastic blue-chip sponsors on board, and UFC has the best sponsors on board."

When Cui referenced the 1 billion viewers, he was speaking in part about the new TV deal they announced last weekend with the largest TV broadcaster in the Philipines, ABS-CBN. Cui believes putting ONE Championship on free to air television in this country is just one of a series of big steps for the organisation and he said their continued success is guaranteed with the people they have on board.

"We’ve been successful only because we have the best people working for us," he said.

"Each and every one of us here on the ONE team plays a significant role in making this a huge success. And we’ve catered to our audience - the Asian MMA fans who have been pining for authentic Asian MMA action and on a world-stage, to be showcased in front of potentially a billion viewers worldwide.

"We’ve developed local MMA heroes, fighters our audience can relate to, fighters who came from the heart of Asia and call Asia their home. We also have some of the best international talents in our ranks as well, which proves ONE is a global sports phenomenon."

Victor Cui

It's this mixture of local talent and global imports that Cui believe is vital to ONE Championship continuing to grow. He offered the example on his fighter roster with American talent like welterweight champion Ben Askren, mixing with the younger Asian talent such as 19-year-old Angela Lee who will contend in the company's first ever strawweight championship fight on May 6.

"We have a great formula where we build local heroes that fans love to watch and our events are full of excitement and is entertaining for all our fans," said Cui.

"Asia is the birthplace of Martial Arts and we felt it was simply the right thing to do - to play into the ancient culture and rich history.

"We didn’t bring MMA to Asia. MMA was already here, it was just waiting to be put on a global stage and that’s what we did. If you’re looking for someone to thank for raising up the sport in the region, thank all the people in history that brought you all the great, ancient martial arts that make up mixed martial arts today."

The next ONE Championship event is on May 6, billed as ONE: Ascent to Power where Angela Lee faces Mei Yamaguchi for the inaugural women's strawweight title.

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