“The motivation to continuously get better” - Jackie Buntan details her overwhelming desire to achieve her highest form
ONE women's strawweight kickboxing world champion Jackie Buntan said the need to constantly improve is among the things that drive her in her professional martial arts career. More so now that she is a title-holder in ONE Championship.
The 27-year-old Boxing Works standout highlighted this in an interview over the DeWar Report by Val de War podcast, which was uploaded earlier this month. Highlighting how raising her game has been a constant motivation for her, Buntan said:
"Yeah, that's really what it is. You said it perfectly. It's just the motivation to continuously get better. After every fight, even prior to winning the belt, even if I did win, I always knew there was so much room for improvement, so many places where I could improve and do better.
"And I thought I was motivated prior to winning this belt, but my motivation is like times a hundred now, now that I'm the champion, now it's just I'm even more hungry to solidify my name in the sport and stay on top and keep defending the belt. And like you said, go for the other one."
Check out what Jackie Buntan had to say below:
Jackie Buntan added her name to the list of ONE Championship world champions with a well-earned decision victory over veteran Algerian-French fighter Anissa Meksen for the inaugural women's strawweight kickboxing world title at ONE 169 back in November.
She now looks forward to defending her belt in her succeeding matches as well as making a go at the currently vacant ONE women's strawweight Muay Thai world title she previously vied for but fell short in April 2022.
Jackie Buntan says tweaking her game to kickboxing from Muay Thai entailed a lot of adjustments
Having long competed in Muay Thai, Jackie Buntan said transitioning her game to kickboxing entailed a lot of hard work and adjustments. She, however, managed to pull it off and is every bit proud of it.
She spoke about it in an interview on The Casuals MMA podcast, sharing what she had to go through in her kickboxing move that led to a world title. She said:
"For this fight, yeah, it's funny, even until now, this really solidified my style, like starting may career up until now. When I was an amateur, I was very Thai style, like I would back up, teep kick, like, long range. I just try to make it pretty, you know?
"Going into ONE, my coach talked to me. This is a game plan for her [Meksen], specifically, like, run her into that left hook. And he always knew I had fast hands, heavy hands, so he's, like, with four ounce gloves, you got to capitalize on that."
Watch the interview below:
Prior to competing in kickboxing, Jackie Buntan competed in seven Muay Thai matches in ONE, winning six of them.