ONE Championship: Japan’s Yosuke Saruta wants a strawweight grand prix after Gustavo Balart bout
- Former champion fights ‘El Gladiator’ at ONE Bad Blood: card on February 11 in Singapore
- ‘Tobizaru’ names Bokang Masunyane, Jarred Brooks and Hiroba Minowa as possible entrants, and hopes to ‘gather everyone together’
Former ONE strawweight champion Yosuke Saruta believes he has a long road back to the title, and is hoping for a grand prix tournament to shorten the journey.
The 34-year-old Japanese fighter will return to the cage at ONE: Bad Blood on February 11 inside the Singapore Indoor Stadium, where he will take Gustavo Balart, a former Olympic Greco-Roman wrestler for Cuba.
The bout with Balart will mark Saruta’s opportunity to rebound from a first-round knockout loss to reigning strawweight king Joshua Pacio. It was his second KO defeat by the Filipino, and one that he suspects may have dashed his title dreams for the time being.
“For my last fight against Pacio, I was preparing for that for over a year, but I wasn’t actually able to display what I had been training for,” Saruta (21-10-3) told the Post on Friday. “Before I was able to show that, I got knocked out. It was very unfortunate.”
“[Pacio] made a statement KO against me,” he added. “As of right now I don’t really intend on rematching against him any time soon.
“I’m just focused on winning my next match. That’s my primary goal.”
If Saruta gets by Balart in Singapore, he’ll have some interesting options at his fingertips. Chief among them will be a fight with American wrestler Jarred Brooks, who has burst into strawweight title contention with lopsided wins over Lito Adiwang and Hiroba Minowa in his first two ONE Championship bouts.
