"A lot of action-packed stuff" - Israel Adesanya highly impressed by ONE's historic US return at ONE 168: Denver
Israel Adesanya was among those who were enamored by ONE Championship's highly awaited United States return in Denver, Colorado last month.
The world's largest martial arts organization brought out the big guns for ONE 168: Denver at the Ball Arena and once again produced a martial arts spectacle across multiple combat sports disciplines.
In a recent guest appearance on Episode 164 of the JRE MMA podcast with Joe Rogan, the former two-time UFC middleweight champion sang praises for the stacked card, which certainly exceeded expectations.
'The Last Stylebender' said:
"They just did the one in Denver for ONE recently, and the fights were crazy. A lot of knockdowns, a lot of action-packed stuff."
It's not surprising that a dynamically entertaining fighter like Israel Adesanya is impressed by what went down at ONE 168.
It was indeed a night of pure martial arts bliss, as world-class athletes laid it all on the line to showcase technical brilliance and unadulterated violence.
Superlek Kiatmoo9 certainly stole the show with his 49-second decimation of Jonathan Haggerty to claim the bantamweight Muay Thai world title in the main event.
Seksan Or Kwanmuang and Liam Harrison's all-out brawl was pure madness. Elsewhere, old reliable John Lineker delivered, while promising young stars Adrian Lee, Johan Ghazali, and Johan Estupinan made statement performances.
Watch the JRE MMA episode in its entirety:
ONE 168's $1M gate tops WWE in Denver
American fans certainly embraced ONE's product, evidenced by the staggering $1.2 million gate attendance and over 8,500 tickets event sold for the Sept. 6 event.
The star-studded event even outperformed the ultra-popular Monday Night Raw in the same week.
This was confirmed by Wrestling Observer's Dave Meltzer, who wrote:
"The 9/6 ONE FC show in Denver did 8,583 paid, 10,331 total, and $1,280,335. That’s an amazing number for that promotion. It was way above what the NXT show five days earlier did, which would be about 6,000 actual paid at much lower prices. While it would be less than Raw did, as Raw did about 10,500 paid and 11,118 total, it would be a far larger gate than Raw."
The full replay of ONE 168: Denver is available on demand for those with a Prime Video subscription in North America