Rodtang Seemingly Blasted by Chatri in ONE Samurai 1 Loss: “When You Make a Lot of Money and Fame Gets to Your Head”
Rodtang may have just had his last fight inside of the ONE Circle and the ONE Championship star is seemingly trying to enter free agency with some shade being thrown at him from ONE’s promoter, to use the parlance of our time.
Takeru finished Rodtang in a rematch that saw the former even up the series against the latter with a fifth round finish that saw Takeru retire by claiming the ONE interim flyweight kickboxing title at ONE Samurai 1. While there was a lot of build around this being Takeru’s swan song, a lot of the pre-fight focus was on heated public contract disputes with Rodtang and ONE with both parties reaching a tentative truce less than two weeks out from this massive matchup.
Rodtang maintains that he has the ability to navigate free agency now while conversely, ONE has maintained that they have a clause that allows them to have a twelve month matching period to potentially secure a new contractual agreement with the decorated Muay Thai champion. The thinly veiled dig at the estranged Thailand-based superstar came after ONE’s promoter Chatri Sityodtong was heaping praise on Jonathan Haggerty who also earned a big win on April 29th at Ariake Arena in Tokyo.
ONE Championship figurehead Chatri Sityodtong spoke on this at the post-event press conference as he lauded Haggerty’s overall body of work in the wake of the Englishman retaining his ONE bantamweight kickboxing crown against Yuki Yoza, Sityodtong said [via Nick Atkin on X],
“I love Jonathan [Haggerty] and I’ll support him… He wants to be a three sport world champion, that would obviously be incredible. If he could do it simultaneously, that would be even more incredible, who knows? He has so much talent and what’s so impressive about Jonathan is that he has always maintained his humility throughout this whole journey and his hard work ethic. Everyone knows Jonathan works hard, he levels up, he’s humble.”
Rodtang seemingly cited as “an example” in derisive manner by sityodtong amid contract dispute
Without naming Rodtang specifically but seemingly casting aspersions at the former opponent of Haggerty, Sityodtong continued,
“He [Jonathan Haggerty] surrounds himself with the best coaches and teammates. That’s something that; I think we saw what happens when you make a lot of money and fame gets to your head. You stop training and you don’t have a team around you. We saw an example tonight, right. Being the best in the world in the world’s largest martial arts organization is not an easy thing and staying the best, staying on top is even harder.”
