Garry Tonon: Shamil Gasanov “Hasn’t Fought Anybody Quite Like Me in Those Past 4 Fights”
Garry Tonon will run it back with Shamil Gasanov in yet another co-main event bout, this time at ONE Fight Night 34 on August 1st, but foresees a bit more resistance in this rematch. Tonon appeared on Bowks Talking Bouts and covered several subjects ahead of his return after eighteen months outside of competition. While Gasanov lost to Tonon fairly emphatically the first time out, the former has since gone on to accrue a four-fight winning streak since the setback to the latter.
Considering the winning stretch for Gasanov (plus, the year and a half off for Tonon that involved rehabbing of injuries as well as further technique refinement within his still relatively young MMA career), when asked if we would see new permutations of both fighters heading into this sequel clash whereby the first fight’s outcome does not play a huge role in this sophomore meeting, Garry Tonon said,
“Yeah, I would say so. I think the two of us, we definitely have our specialty regardless. But you can see decent changes in his game from our last fight to now. You watch certain things that he’ll [do]. Certain punches and combinations and things that he’ll throw. He’s got a little bit of a higher fight IQ, making more intelligent decisions in certain areas. But he still generally has the idea of I’m going to take you down, I’m going to get behind you, and I’m going to try to strangle you.”
“That’s pretty much what he’s trying to do in most of his fights. But there’s definitely improvements that he’s made, there’s no question. So it’ll be different, and I would imagine that he, obviously after losing the last fight between us, would take that pretty seriously and try to do everything he can to not repeat the process. So I’m sure there will be some things that he worked on defensively that I haven’t really seen in his past four fights.”
“Because he hasn’t fought anybody quite like me in those past four fights. But I would expect there to be a certain amount of maybe leg lock defense or something like that that would be there. Because this guy has been calling me out since he lost [laughs]. So it’s like to do that and to not anticipate that it’s going to be happening at some point in the near future would be kind of crazy. So I’d imagine that since then, he’s had a long time to think about what he can do to make it more difficult for a guy like me to beat him. I’m sure this is going to be a tougher fight.”
Garry Tonon and the story of the first Shamil Gasanov bout
On July 14th, 2023, Garry Tonon had his first meeting with Shamil Gasanov, and the outing ended around the halfway mark of the second stanza. At ONE Fight Night 12, ‘The Lion Killer’ secured a kneebar in the night’s co-main event bout and finished a ranked featherweight MMA contender under the ONE Championship umbrella.
Going 2-0 over an established contender like Gasanov can pay dividends in Garry Tonon’s goal of securing a second crack at the ONE featherweight crown after a prior championship bid against Thanh Le fell short.
