Issue 161

December 2017

How Aussie knockout artist Martin Nguyen pulled off one of the upsets of the year to become a champion and honor his Asian heritage

Martin Nguyen

• ONE Championship
• 145lb champion
• Age: 30
• Record: 13-3-0
• Alias The Situ-Asian

In 2017, Australia got its first MMA world champion. No, we’re not talking about Robert Whittaker. While ‘The Reaper’s interim UFC 185lb title victory against Yoel Romero was staggeringly impressive, we don’t want to anger Michael Bisping, who might argue about the legitimacy of that belt while he’s ‘undisputed’ champ.

There can be no argument about Martin Nguyen’s claim to the ONE Championship 145lb strap, though. The Vietnamese- Australian emphatically claimed it with a stunning victory over the previously unstoppable, undefeated, Marat Gafurov.

The Dagestani grappler was 15-0 and mowed through every opponent in the Asian promotion. He’d submitted each of his six opponents by rear naked choke, including a 41-second destruction of Nguyen when they fought for the interim title two years before. Though he may not have wins over anyone in the UFC’s top 10, he is, without a doubt, an elite competitor.

There was good reason, you might agree, for the Russian to come into the fight as a huge -675 favorite, but Nguyen didn’t accept that. He’d won each of his four bouts since that loss by first-round KO and was planning to do the same this time, too.

“I had something to prove, but in terms of odds, I don’t look at that, man,” he says. “I just think it’s two guys going into a fight, well-prepared, with plenty of time to prepare, so anything can happen.” And it did happen.

“I took the first fight on a day and a half’s notice and if the odds came to play there I’d be like, yeah, I’m the biggest underdog. In terms of this one I was like, ‘Am I still the underdog?’ I had a full camp to prepare, so I had no excuses.”

He didn’t need any. ‘The Situ-Asian’ caused one of the upsets of the year when a thunderous overhand right put Gafurov down. Cue cries of: “The big kibosh! It’s goodnight Irene!” from iconic Antipodean commentator Michael Schiavello, and the coronation of a new champion.

Winning was far from straightforward, though. The first round was fraught with danger, as Gafurov got the challenger down into his world and threatened with his signature submission. But this time, with time to prepare, the 28-year-old from Liverpool, New South Wales, had the skill and patience to escape and implement his game plan.

“That’s a big factor in the fight game,” he says. “You’ve got to think worst-case-scenario. That’s him taking my back, and he did it in the first 40 seconds. Once I got put in that position I was like, ‘OK, I’ve been in this position for six weeks in a row.’ That preparation was more the mental side of it, so I didn’t panic. I was in that position, so I had to get out of it. Eventually, it went my way.

“We knew throughout the fight camp and the previous fights he’d had that he comes in with the left kick and always follows with the straight jab. That’s how he closes the distance. I trained that one punch in a previous camp for Kazunori Yokota, too. With Marat, we knew he threw lazy kicks, but I don’t think it was a lazy kick: I think he was tired. I’d also landed that punch three or four times prior to the knockout.

“After the first round he was tired, he threw it, the reaction was there, the timing was there and it dropped him and we just followed up on it. I actually felt better landing on Yokota. With Marat, he landed an inside leg kick that put me in an awkward position but the right hand still landed, so it was still good. I’ll take it!”

Once Nguyen hammered the coffin nails to finish his ailing opponent, referee Yuji Shimada stepped in. The new champ jumped on the cage to celebrate and emotion took over. As ONE vice president Rich Franklin gave him the belt, he burst into tears and dropped to his knees.

“This one was for my dad,” he sobbed. “He was the sole inspiration this whole camp. I mentally broke, the boys kept me together and I kept turning back to my dad. This is the one thing I wanted to do in front of his eyes and unfortunately, he can’t be here today, but I know he’s watching over me.”

Eight weeks of training for 10 rounds – double the championship total – with his team and a number of UFC veterans had pushed him to the limit. It had taken its toll and brought him to his lowest ebb, to the brink of giving up. But thoughts of his late father, and the struggles he’d been through, kept him going.

As the Vietnam War struggled on towards its conclusion in the 1970s, Nguyen’s parents decided to flee from South Vietnam. They went through Southeast Asian refugee camps before arriving in Australia, where he worked as a laborer, to build their family.

Shortly after Nguyen won his first title – in the Aussie organization, Brace – his dad died suddenly. From then on, he used his work ethic as inspiration to push through his toughest training sessions and fights to honor his dad’s work ethic, and prepare himself to win the title.

“I use my dad’s struggle,” he explains. “Whatever I go through, it can’t be as bad as what they went through and that kind of leveled me out. My family means the most to me. Using our struggles together as motivation to push through to that next level is obviously a huge factor – throughout that last fight camp as well because that was the hardest I’ve had.

“We just ramped up everything, day in, day out. Mentally, there were stages where I was over it, but family brought me back to where I am now.”

Where he is now is on top of the Asian MMA world, which is a fitting way to pay tribute to his late father. He says he knows he’d be proud, just like his mother – though she’s too scared to watch his fights.

The next assignment is bigger even than the Gafurov fight. Nguyen will be going into the hostile territory of Manila in the Philippines for a super-fight with lightweight champion Eduard Folayang.

Once that’s taken care of, his attention will switch back to defending his title and anchoring the first major event in his parents’ homeland next year. His organization is yet to make its mark in ’Nam, but with a growing economy and now a champion the locals can get behind, the time is right. A date in Da Nang has been set for October 2018.

“Being Asian-based, I’d love to put Vietnam on the map,” Nguyen says. “They need a local hero, or one from Vietnamese stock, and I want to put my native country on the map. We’re trying to crack the market and I want to be the guy to do it.

“I haven’t been back to Vietnam in almost 10 years. The last time was when I finished high school. Since then, I started working and studying as a mechanic and stayed in Australia, so I’m long overdue and I can’t wait to go back.”

But would that persuade his mum to watch? “She doesn’t like the fact that her son has a chance of getting hurt,” Nguyen says. “It’s just a mother’s instinct. I want to bring her back home to be at that event but we’ll see. She’s scared!

“My sisters buy the pay-per-view. They watch every fight up to mine, then they don’t watch it and just listen to the results,” he says with a laugh.

He’d also love to get more recognition in the homeland where he and his wife have raised a boy – an eight-year-old who stays up until the small hours, when his eyes are red, to watch his dad compete – and two girls. This son of Sydney would love to carve out a niche and cultivate more of a following in Australia, where the UFC has shown what an appetite there is for MMA with some huge shows, adding to a vibrant local scene that’s producing more and more top talent.

“We’ve got an interim world champion in Robert Whittaker, who’s done really well. And then we’ve also got me… It’s massive. There are events starting up that are big already and bringing international fighters in. There are a lot of shows and it’s all growing. You see fighters that are stepping up and ready to go international.

“I don’t have a huge following in Australia yet – I think I have a bigger following in Asia – but people certainly do follow me. Everyone’s heard of the UFC, but I’d also love it if ONE Championship could crack into that market, too.”

A debut show in the country’s biggest city, headlined by the defending champion, isn’t too hard to imagine. And that’s yet another thing that would make Martin Nguyen’s family proud.