In 2015, Chinese fighter Yang Jian Bing passed away, reportedly due to a bad weight cut for a bout in ONE Championship. Less than two weeks after his death, the promotion instilled a new weight cutting policy that involved hydration testing, multiple weigh-ins, and renaming divisions.
ONE Championship’s been known to push hyperbole and questionable claims, and what first seemed like a quick way to avoid bad PR in China and the rest of Asia, was eventually marketed as a “revolutionary system” that supposedly solved a longstanding issue in MMA and combat sports.