Issue 167
May 2018
There may not be a mixed martial artist alive who is more popular in his homeland than Aung La N Sang.
There’s always an extra buzz from the crowd when a local athlete is competing on the big stage. When they’re one of MMA’s star names, whole arenas shake as thousands of locals cheer on their favourite fighter. Think Conor McGregor in Dublin, Georges St-Pierre in Montreal or Chris Weidman in Long Island.
But the biggest ovations in mixed martial arts right now are for a man in a country that has only recently embraced the sport. One that’s home to more than 50 million people, though many in the West may not be able to find it on the map.
In Myanmar (formerly known as Burma), ONE Championship’s middleweight and light heavyweight champion, Aung La N Sang, can cause something close to a riot whenever he appears in public.
N Sang was born in the city of Myitkyina in Kachin state in the north of his country.
It’s a place he describes as “not super developed”, where his exposure to the wider world was limited. “When I was a kid, I’d never seen white or black people,” he explains. “White people scared me! My elementary teacher dyed her hair and I wouldn’t go to school because I was so scared of how different she looked.”
His horizons were broadened when he traveled to the US for college, studying in Michigan before moving to Southwestern Indiana, where he began training at a Carlson Gracie affiliate gym.
He began his professional MMA career in the Midwest, before taking a step up in class on the East Coast in Ring of Combat, Cage Fury Fighting Championships and Bellator, fighting out of Baltimore’s Crazy 88 MMA.
While he was under contract with CFFC, he was offered a place on Bellator’s Fight Master series, but a far bigger opportunity was around the corner, after ONE Championship began to expand across Southeast Asia and into the nation of his birth.
“It was one of the promotions I wanted to get into,” recalls the ‘Burmese Python’. “The timing was just perfect. I’d gone through a lot of developmental phases of my career. I fought the best of the talent out there that was kind of unknown.
"The East Coast produced some really tough guys during that time. Having fought those guys and been tested, I feel like the timing was perfect for coming to Asia.”
He made his debut in Jakarta, Indonesia, missing out on the first fight card in the country’s largest city and commercial center, Yangon (formerly the capital city, Rangoon).
He was, however, given a main-event spot for the second show: ONE Championship: Union of Warriors at the Thuwunna Indoor Stadium – a few blocks from where he grew up. Even though he knew he’d be the hometown darling, N Sang was not prepared for the support he’d receive once he got there.
“I was clueless. Never in a million years did I think it would turn out like this and Myanmar would be so receptive to MMA,” he remembers. “Myanmar is all over MMA. They love it. They love combat sports. The fanbase is humongous.
“They already knew who I was and people would take pictures with me. They were so receptive and so nice. They treated me like I was a star, even from the first trip there. We made the front page of the newspaper for our press conference. It was just amazing… and it keeps escalating.
“It’s night and day from the States to here. Everybody is in your face and wants your picture. It’s insane, overwhelming. Sometimes it’s a little stressful. I can’t go anywhere without people coming and asking for pictures and stuff. I literally cannot walk the streets. You want to do your own thing sometimes but people stop you everywhere you go.”
When he stopped Mohamed Ali with a first-round guillotine choke, the whole arena came unglued. Thousands of glowsticks waved in the air as a sold-out crowd rose to its feet and jumped around to wildly celebrate the victory in unison. Myanmar had a new hero.
N Sang’s star continued to rise during his next few fights, but it went supernova in June last year when he captured the ONE middleweight crown from Vitaly Bigdash.
The Russian had dominated their first fight in January when his opponent stepped in on two weeks’ notice, but a full training camp brought renewed confidence for the rematch. There was also the added advantage of having rabid home support in his favor.
“When you’re getting ready for a big fight and you’ve got 10,000 people screaming your name, it pumps you up,” N Sang says. “For sure I had confidence. I knew it was going to be tough because he was strong and well-rounded, but I also knew I could fight for 25 minutes.”
The challenger drew first blood, dropping Bigdash with strikes in round one, but the contest turned into a back-and-forth war that ended up being ONE’s best of the year. But that was all part of the plan for N Sang, even if he’d expected his early salvo to finish most other men.
“Yeah, for sure, but I’d seen his fight against Igor Svirid and he’d got dropped like, three times, and he kept coming back so I had to be smart with that,” he says. “I had to be able to hammer and keep hammering. I knew he was going to be hard to put away.
“I felt like I did more damage. I hit him with better shots. On the feet, I felt confident. When he hit me on the forehead I was thinking, I bet that hurt your hand! I put more damage on him than he put on me. In that sense, I felt like I won the fight.”
He did, doing enough to earn a unanimous decision based on ONE’s Pride-style scoring criteria, which values near-KOs and submissions, as well as damage, more highly than criteria like control.
Once again, the crowd went crazy when his hand was raised, screaming and embracing one another, prompting an emotional reaction from the new champion, who expressed his love for his countrymen.
He said: “I’m not talented. I’m not good. I’m not fast. But with you, I have courage, I have strength, I have what I need to win the world title!”
“It was something from my heart,” he explains. “I couldn’t script it. I was letting the fans know I’m just a regular person. I put everything on the line to win that fight and be a champion, but I’m no different from everybody else. I’m not super athletic, I wasn’t born with super athleticism, you know? It was heartfelt.”
It was hard to imagine N Sang becoming even more famous and adored, but grabbing the gold was just another step up in his amazing rise in superstardom.
The 32-year-old’s schedule since becoming middleweight champion has been unorthodox. He was matched up with 245lb Cameroon kickboxer, Alain Ngalani, for an open-weight superfight last November – winning by a first-round guillotine choke that was met with more mayhem in Myanmar.
He followed that by taking the vacant light heavyweight title in February by stopping Alexandre Machado with a head kick after 56 seconds.
That was a sign of the improvement he’s already made by training with Henri Hooft in Florida. That, too, is an indication that N Sang is committed not to rest on his laurels.
Reaching the top of his division was only the start of a campaign to leave a legacy in the country of his birth that really means something. To him, being champion is more than just owning a belt and getting an impressive entry on his Wikipedia page. He wants to excel.
“The second belt, I felt very composed and felt like I deserved it. For this fight, I moved camps. I lived in a little room in Florida – almost like a prison cell – for eight weeks, away from my family. I felt very ready, I felt strong. I wasn’t a shocker to me but I was very happy with how I won the fight.
“It’s a big confidence booster and being able to train with high-level guys at my weight class makes a big difference. You have guys that are top 10, top five in the world at middleweight and light heavyweight on a daily basis and I have a really good striking coach and wrestling coach. I feel like I’ve only scratched the surface of my potential by moving camps.
“I have two belts now and I want to defend both of them. I don’t want to hold up any division. I want to fight real light heavyweight contenders and real middleweight contenders.”
His defenses may also lie away from the familiar surroundings of his motherland in ONE’s biggest shows in Singapore, Manila, Shanghai, and beyond.
“I would love to fight in the big shows,” he adds. “As much as I love fighting in Yangon, I would love to fight somewhere else. I actually feel like it’s unfair for my opponents. That’s why I tried to make this fight very decisive. I don’t want to make it like, ‘Oh it was a close decision and he won because he’s got a hometown crowd.’”
He’d also be free from the extra obligations that come with being his country’s equivalent of Michael Jordan, as ONE CEO, Chatri Sityodtong describes him.
There would be less pressure, fewer media obligations, and a reduction in the number of commercials for sponsors he’d have to film. Though he’s grateful for all the opportunities those responsibilities bring, it’s understandable why he’d want a break from them as he describes spending 12 hours fulfilling his duties before his last contest.
“I’d have to just show up and fight. That would be nice,” he admits.
Outside the cage, N Sang is also keen to make an impact as an ambassador for ONE as part of its partnership with the Global Citizen organization, which aims to eradicate extreme poverty in the world by 2030.
Specifically, he has engaged with the myME Myanmar Mobile Education Project, which has a goal of providing education for the country’s 1.2 million children who are forced away from school to work and support their family and villages.
“I think it’s very important that whenever we’re successful in life, we use that success and we use our platform to promote good and to improve the lives of people around us,” he says.
“It really surprised me how much popularity and how much notice I’m getting for doing what I love – for doing something I’d be doing even if I wasn’t getting this reward. I have to use that platform to improve other people’s lives.
"In a sense, I feel like people in Burma get discouraged sometimes because of the things going on in their country or their lives. I want to improve people’s lives so they feel like there’s a way out.”
Ultimately, that appears to give him more satisfaction than winning any fight or belt. Myanmar’s turbulent political and economic history has made life hard for many of its population. They have not even had many sporting heroes to cheer for at an international level.
In recent years, however, opportunities have emerged as the country has opened up to the rest of the world, and ‘The Burmese Python’s success has captured the imagination of many of its people.
They have someone to root for who can succeed against athletes from around the globe and that’s a source of great pride for them – and for him.
“It makes me very happy. It’s very nice when good things happen to you – you win a fight, you get paid for fighting – but it’s even nicer when you see a smile on the little kids, or when you smile from an old lady in Burma, because I made them proud to be Burmese. That gives me a lot of joy.”
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