Issue 203
March 2024
Anatoly Malykhin made history at ONE 166 when he became the first MMA fighter to become a three-weight world champion in a major promotion. However, the sight of him with a belt over each shoulder and one wrapped around his waist prompts a lot of questions. What exactly did he do? How did he do it? Why is he the first fighter to achieve this goal?
Fighters Only’s Kyle Dimond caught up with the undefeated force of nature to try and answer some of these questions by looking back at the trials he faced to write his name into the record books.
THE HISTORY MAKER
Before you can understand a man’s accomplishments, you must understand the man himself. One of the biggest questions to address from the start is the background information, or lack thereof, that is out there on Malykhin. To fill in some of the gaps, this was the best place to start when speaking to the recently crowned three-weight world champion.
Born in southwestern Siberia, Anatoly gravitated towards sport and competition from a young age. He says that despite starting freestyle wrestling in the 5th grade, thanks to his grandfather, it wasn’t until his late teens that making a career out of sport was something he thought he might pursue. Though it’s, as he says, “a ticket to a better life” for many people, he was just caught up in the passion of sport as a pastime. Anatoly was no regular child who enjoyed a few after-school clubs.
“What can I say about my family, I never saw my father drink, he was always a good example for me,” Malykhin tells Fighters Only. “In our house, a room was made for a gym, where my father used to train every morning, and we used to watch him train with my brother. Then, we started training, too, a little weightlifting. I used to skip classes to go to PE, not just with my class, but with all others. Sometimes, five times in a row during the day, hiding behind the door from the head teacher who was looking for me, but I hid behind the door with my sports bag. That was my childhood.”
MMA AND “THE LAST EMPEROR”
With his love for freestyle wrestling and track record for getting into fights on the streets (and winning them), Malykhin seemed destined for MMA. This didn’t become a reality until two things happened in his life. First, he realized that wrestling wasn’t paying the bills, and then he watched one of the all-time greats compete in MMA, Fedor Emelianenko.
Already a Master of Sport in wrestling, Malykhin added some amateur MMA accolades to his wrestling ones, including the WMMAA heavyweight world championship. His pro debut came in 2016, and it took until his seventh pro fight for anyone to make it out of the first round with him. His grappling was so dominant that once you had hit the floor with him, it was only a matter of time before he submitted you or reigned down some ferocious shots. Malykhin’s striking was a grey area at the time, as reflected in this prospect report by MMA Scout, written in 2019.
“More of an unknown rather than a weakness. Despite being 7 fights into his professional career, we still don’t really know how good Malykhin’s striking is. This is because he has been able to easily take down most of his opponents and keep them there. However, should Malykhin face an opponent that is able to stuff his early takedowns he will have to showcase his striking or risk his whole game falling apart.”
All of that changed once he arrived in the ONE Championship.
WELCOME TO THE JUNGLE
Anatoly was inactive for over a year and a half before making his ONE Championship debut. The COVID-19 pandemic stunted his activity but allowed him to spend a lot of time working on his craft. Alongside a hotbed of world-class strikers at Tiger Muay Thai in Phuket, Malykhin was about to show the global stage precisely what he was capable of.
His first fight in ONE against Alexandre Machado was another dominant display, but where Malykhin caught the eye was in his second bout against Amir Aliakbari. Despite both men competing at heavyweight, they are at opposite ends of the size scales, which worked in the Russian’s favor. His improved striking was crucial for beating a fellow wrestling specialist with his speed and accuracy, earning him his first knockout on the feet.
Following his win over Aliakbari, Malykhin immediately set his sights on the heavyweight world champion, Arjan Bhullar. More delays impacted his trajectory, as Bhullar was not overly eager to make a quick return, so an interim title fight against Kirill Grishenko was put together for January 2022. A positive COVID-19 test delayed the fight another month, but ultimately, as has come to be the case in many of his fights, the result felt like an inevitability once they finally stepped inside the Circle.
Anatoly claimed his first (almost comically large) world championship by stopping Grishenko in the second round to become the interim champion. After receiving the rare $100,000 bonus, he again diverted his attention to Bhullar in his post-fight interview. Looking around the cage like he had lost his mouthpiece, he poked fun at the heavyweight champion. “Arjan Bhullar, my baby chicken. No fight. No big heart. One fight? Bhullar where? Come come. Fight!” He shouted at the barren arena during the pandemic.
CHASING HIS FIRST PIECE OF REAL GOLD
Malykhin’s continued taunting of Arjan Bhullar is where his personality began to shine. Videos of him chasing after chickens and shouting Arjan at them showed that this Siberian super athlete had a great sense of humor. He was also right to continuously throw jabs at Bhullar, though they seemingly had no effect as the fight would get made, then postponed, then made, and then postponed, and so on.
“I try not to get frustrated with life, especially because of small things like a fight being canceled or something. My family and I have come to the conclusion that everything that happens is as it should be.” Malykhin said, reflecting on this period of stalling. “We are guided through life by a greater power, we feel its presence. If a fight is postponed or something else happens, we just accept it, enjoy living, and keep preparing. Arjan is just a chicken, after all, and I had been telling everyone that as soon as I got to him, it's all over.”
Malykhin would have to wait a little bit longer to finally get his hands on his “baby chicken.” With Bhullar sidelined with an injury, one door closed, but another opened. On less-than-ideal notice, the undefeated interim heavyweight champion was lined up to move to light heavyweight to take on the undefeated double champion, Reinier de Ridder. Caught with heavy punches early and unable to take the fight to the ground, de Ridder was forced into survival mode from the start of the fight, and once again, it was a ticking clock before Anatoly secured the win. A devastating first-round knockout handed the Dutchman his first defeat.
Malykhin reflected on this slight change of course before he returned to heavyweight. “Mentally, there were challenges because de Ridder was a big test for me. When we met him, he was 16-0. When you see how easily he beat guys in the first period, you realize that this is a big fight, this fight is going to be watched by a lot of people, it's a big responsibility. Obviously, the winner will go to a new level, and somebody will lose a zero on the record. This fight has taken me to a new level mentally, in terms of work, in terms of discipline, for which I am certainly grateful to de Ridder.”
ANATOLY MALYKHIN 2.0
In all three of his title fights, it has been the striking of Anatoly Malykhin that has seen him become a belt collector. Rather than using his wrestling offensively, his grappling prowess forces opponents to stand with him, and while he might be undersized at a heavyweight, his speed and power make up for it. In his fight with Arjan Bhullar, this was the case when they eventually met in July 2023. The result was inevitable. He spoke about his evolution as a fighter, where it comes from, and whether the Malykhin from 2021 could hold a candle to the level he is at right now.
“Of course, there would have been chances because in 2021, I was physically very strong, and I practically only wrestled. My wrestling was really stronger than it is now. Now it is at a good level as well, but still, I have changed my attitude towards fighting in general, because before I just wanted to win at all costs, and now I want to give people a spectacular performance.” Malykhin reflects. “I want to give people a show, and that's why I've learnt to box, maybe even to take more risks, because before I didn't allow myself to take risks, I would go out there and just do my job with confidence in what I'm really good at. I think I'm a much more entertaining fighter now and that's why they put me in the main events of the night because I'm always moving forward. The current version, let's say, is maybe more entertaining than the 2021 version.”
THE JEWEL IN THE CROWN
The final piece of his historic three-weight world champion puzzle already had the groundwork laid for it back in 2022. Malykhin had handed de Ridder the first loss of his career and taken his light heavyweight title in the process, but what if he could somehow drop down to middleweight to face “RDR” for his other world championship? The fight was made for ONE 166 in Qatar, Malykhin going for history and de Ridder for revenge.
This fight appeared to be Malykhin’s toughest trial to date in securing the trifecta of titles. Not only would he be at his opponent’s natural weight class, but he had never fought as low as middleweight before. Due to ONE’s hydration testing program, more on that later, he wouldn’t be able to “crash cut” the weight. He would need to use gradual progress toward slimming himself down. Not only did he make it to middleweight safely, but he also looked just as good as ever.
It had been nearly a year and a half since their first encounter, which showed in the fight. The middleweight champion made almost every adjustment you could predict him to make. Despite having success with some of these evolutions in his game, the time bomb continued to tick as the challenger wore his opponent down by targeting his body.
Despite his best efforts, de Ridder eventually succumbed to the overwhelming tide in the third round when he failed to answer the referee’s call to return to his feet. History was made, and Malykhin still looked like he had a few more rounds in the tank. During his post-fight speech, the three-weight champion praised de Ridder, tapping him on the chest and commending his “heart of stone.” De Ridder jokingly replied, “He can’t stop punching me, man.”
SO, HOW DID HE DO IT?
Notice that no specific weight limits have been named aside from calling the weight classes by their names (middleweight, light heavyweight, etc.). That’s because ONE Championship does things a little bit differently. In 2015, 21-year-old Chinese fighter Yang Jian Bing passed away due to dehydration caused by weight cutting. ONE took away from this that the current system needed to be altered, which created the introduction of hydration tests.
When you make weight in ONE Championship, you must hit the weight limit and pass a hydration test to avoid fighters draining all the water out of their bodies to fight at a lower weight class. On one hand, this makes it difficult for Malykhin to make middleweight as he would need to undergo a long process of dieting to make the weight more natural. However, there’s more to this than just the testing.
While the success of the hydration testing has been called into question with claims of it being relatively simple to trick, it also impacts the weight classes. Hydration testing encourages fighters to fight more at their natural weight; therefore, the weight classes in ONE Championship are higher than that of the UFC. For example, Demetrious Johnson is the ONE flyweight world champion, having also been the flyweight champion in the UFC. When he competed at flyweight in the UFC, he would be required to weigh 125 pounds for championship bouts. In ONE, because he isn’t allowed to cut too much water weight, the flyweight limit is 135 pounds.
THE CLAIM TO GREATNESS
So, what does this all mean for Malykhin and his three weight claims? When he moved down to light heavyweight to face Reinier de Ridder at ONE on Prime Video 5, he had far less weight to cut down than if he was in another fight promotion. The heavyweight limit is universally 265 pounds, but you should also remember that Malykhin isn’t the biggest heavyweight anyway. He needed to make 225 for light heavyweight, essentially making it more of a cruiserweight division. Light heavyweight in the UFC is 205 pounds, meaning that the jump from someone like Jamahal Hill up to a big heavyweight like Derrick Lewis is a huge difference. Hill could put on some mass to make heavyweight, but Lewis getting down to 205 pounds? Unlikely.
Then you have the big cut down to middleweight. Middleweight in the UFC is 185 pounds, whereas, in ONE Championship, it is 205 pounds (considered light heavyweight elsewhere). If you believe in the value of hydration testing, this is still a difficult task, and his performance at that weight is still awe-inspiring. That being said, it does bear caution that his three-weight success would only be the equivalent of winning belts at light heavyweight and heavyweight in the UFC if they added another weight class between them.
None of this is meant to underplay what he achieved; it is still an incredibly difficult thing to do, and there’s a reason no one has done it before, aside from the likes of Juan Archuleta, a three-weight world champion in a regional promotion. It does mean that there will be people who will dispute whether he is genuinely the first-ever three-weight world champion because if you have an extra weight class that no other promotion does, is it the same accomplishment?
“Making weight is not a problem for me,” Malykhin revealed when asked about the challenge he faced ahead of ONE 166. “When I'm motivated when my body knows it simply has to do it, it just does it. I become very disciplined, I rely on my great team, who watch all my nutrition, my sleep, and my workouts. I told everyone right away that I would make weight easily and that there would be no problem with it.”
Seeing a three-weight world champion in the UFC is hard to imagine. If there were someone who could do it, maybe not simultaneously but individually, many would put forward Alex Pereira (36 years old). He’s already won titles at middleweight and light heavyweight, and given his 6’4 frame, one-punch power, and his own expressed interest in a heavyweight move, it seems likely that he will try to do it at some point.
In doing so, “Poatan” will have won titles in weight classes that, while 265 pounds is only a heavyweight limit and would likely weigh less than that, are 80 pounds apart compared to the 60-pound jump for Malykhin. As a counterpoint, Pereira cut a lot of water weight to make middleweight before he made the move up, and that wouldn't have been doable if the UFC had hydration testing.
FEED HIM MORE
Now that he has conquered three weight classes, the question turns to what’s next? The champion has expressed interest in returning to heavyweight next time out, where he will likely face off with Amir Aliakbari for a second time. MMA was in a challenging position in ONE Championship throughout 2023. Most of the divisions remained mostly inactive, which means that while Malykhin has been preparing to put on and then cut down his weight, there hasn’t been much movement alongside his title pursuits.
In 2023, with ONE hosting significant events on Prime Video each month, there were just five title fights across their entire MMA roster. In comparison, there were 12 world championship contests in Muay Thai, 7 in kickboxing, and 6 in submission grappling despite the size of that roster.
For what it is worth, 2024 has kicked off in a much better fashion regarding the MMA divisions in ONE. We have already seen three MMA title fights, with a fourth scheduled for the coming months. Also, in defense of the promotion, tragedy struck at the end of 2023 with the passing of Victoria Lee, which led to atomweight champion Angela Lee being inactive and then retiring while her younger brother Christian, a two-weight world champion, is still yet to return. Malykhin needs challenges but has beaten many of the top names at the heavyweight level. And middleweight hasn’t been an active division, and light heavyweight is scarcely populated to begin with because it isn’t a weight class that exists worldwide.
A NEW KIND OF CHAMPION
Anatoly Malykhin’s achievement is worthy of celebration. His performances alone in multiple weight classes have been dominant, and he is a remarkable athlete. The broader question becomes whether it will still hold up on the same tier if someone can replicate it in another organization with more contenders and the standard weight classes. It’s hard to say, but if there’s one thing for sure, it’s that Malykhin, who is just 36 years old, isn’t even close to being finished yet. The key is that while it may have been easier to some degree, that doesn’t make it easy by default.
