A former star for the promotion has taken shots at two of the key figures in ONE Championship following his exit.
Some of the biggest names from ONE’s MMA roster have recently departed with the likes of Reinier de Ridder signing with the UFC and Demetrious Johnson retiring.
After finding great success inside the Octagon, de Ridder went as far as to warn fighters about signing with his former promotion where he reigned as a two-weight champion.
Though his ONE career ended on bad terms, Arjan Bhullar was a big get for the promotion when he signed back in 2019 following a brief stint in the UFC.
The former ONE heavyweight champion recently announced that he’s now a free agent and now that some time has passed, he vented some of his frustrations in social media posts that have since been deleted.
Arjan Bhullar slams ONE Championship’s Chatri Sityodtong and Matt Hume in social media spree
In 2021, Arjan Bhullar defeated Brandon Vera to become the ONE heavyweight champion in a result that could’ve been big for the promotion given his Indian heritage.
His title run didn’t go to plan with several cancelled fights and a long contract dispute keeping him away from competition until his first title defense finally took place over two years on from his win over Vera.
Bhullar lost the title to Anatoly Malykhin in June of 2023 before returning the following March where he suffered a disqualification loss to Amir Aliakbari after being shown a red card by the referee due to timidity.
In a series of social media posts, the former champion was very critical of ONE CEO Chatri Sityodtong and the promotion’s Senior Vice President of Competition, Matt Hume.
He spoke negatively of the promotion’s business practices and the way he was treated during his time on the roster before claiming that Sityodtong will be “remembered as the biggest failure in the history of sport”.
Following Bhullar’s final fight in the promotion, Sityodtong slammed the former champion, claiming that “India will no longer look at him as a hero” after he received the first ever red card for timidity.
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Arjan Bhullar said he doesn’t regret signing with ONE Championship when announcing his free agency
In May, Arjan Bhullar appeared on The Ariel Helwani Show where he stated that despite now being a free agent, he wasn’t able to talk about his issues with ONE Championship.
“I’m not at liberty to speak my mind, even after… You would think so. It is what it is.”
Despite this, he also stated that he doesn’t regret signing with ONE in 2019 because it was the best option for him at that time.
“To be honest, in hindsight, I still think it was…ONE, at the end of the day, gave me an opportunity to fight for a world title. It gave me a platform in India which I always craved and always wanted. No one had those opportunities outside of that… ONE gave me a lot of things, checked off a lot of boxes for me.”
Bhullar is yet to announce whether he will be returning to competition in the near future though he has recently been promoting his new movie, ‘Title Fight: Between Two Worlds’, which has been released on Prime Video.