China’s Yong wants to wow fans by stopping McLaren at ONE Championship bout to earn potential title shot
- Yong in good form with three victories on the bounce and two coming inside first round
- Hopes ‘heavy punches and great physical strength and fitness’ will see him past Australian opponent
Hu Yong will be flying the flag for China at ONE Fight Night 22 next week in his bout against Reece McLaren at Lumpinee Stadium and the 28-year-old said he is out to entertain the fans in Bangkok.
Yong is a fast starter who has won his last three, with two of those victories coming inside a round, and plans to apply some early pressure to McLaren.
“I don’t want to have a boring fight, so I like to fight early and directly,” he said. “I like to fight like a warrior. I enjoy the feeling of a firefight. It gets me excited, and that’s why I do so well at the beginning of fights.”
His opponent is a BJJ black belt who challenged for the bantamweight title back in 2016. Both men are now competing at flyweight with McLaren ranked at #4 and Yong sitting at #5. If Yong wins, he will be in a position to start talking about title shots.
McLaren is renowned for his submission skills but the Chinese fighter said he is ready.
“He’s a strong grappler,” Yong said of his upcoming opponent. “I’ve prepared for a lot of avoiding getting it to the ground.
“I’m sure it won’t be that easy for him to take me down, and even if he does, he’ll have a hard time controlling me on the ground, and I’ll definitely want to stay in a stand-up fight.”
McLaren is a very experienced operator and has been on the ONE Championship roster since 2015. It means there is plenty of footage for Yong to review and he has been assessing his opponent’s strengths and weaknesses.
“He definitely has improved in striking, but this improvement is not enough to make him become a top striker,” Yong added. “He has poor knockout ability in striking, and he’s weak in physical strength and fitness.
“My advantages are heavy punches and great physical strength and fitness.”
Yong has not been working on any specific techniques for McLaren as he prefers to see how the fight plays out and is confident that sooner or later an opportunity will arise to finish the Australian.
“I don’t prepare specific weapons,” he said. “What I need to do is keep striking and find a chance to knock him out.”
The only fighter to ever finish Reece McLaren with a succession of punches was Kevin Belingon, back in 2017. Yong believes he can replicate that achievement and thinks the fans at Lumpinee Stadium will be firmly behind him.
“I think it will not be a full three-round fight,” Yong predicted. “For me, the perfect fight is to KO my opponent and ignite the passion of all the people watching.”
ONE Championship has two Chinese champions: strawweight queen Xiong Jing Nan and featherweight king Thanh Le. Yong dreams of ruling the flyweight champion and he can take a big step towards the tile with a win over McLaren next week.
