ONE Championship has a new heavyweight king following the main event of ONE 169 on November 8.
Anatoly Malykhin made history earlier this year by becoming a three-weight world champion after going down to middleweight.
His second win over Reinier de Ridder saw him achieve dominance across middleweight, light heavyweight and heavyweight.
In his first title defence, he moved back up to heavyweight and was defeated by Oumar "Reug Reug" Kane via split decision at Lumpinee Stadium.
Kane had said in the build up to the fight that he would prove himself to be the better wrestler of the two with both of them coming from grappling backgrounds.
He implemented this plan early on and after Malykhin grabbed the ropes during the takedown attempts, he was cautioned with a yellow card from referee Herb Dean.
This combined with a strong end to the fight from the challenger swung the split decision outcome in his favour with the bout being scored as a whole under ONE Championship's criteria, rather than round-by-round.
After pulling off the upset and taking one of Malykhin's three belts from him, Kane may have pulled off a life changing victory.
He is reportedly set to be welcomed back to Senegal as a hero by the president, prime minister and sports minister in a win that will be front page news in his home country.
Given the fact that Malykhin was undefeated up to this point, it wouldn't be surprising to see a rematch between them in the near future.
