Marcus Almeida isn’t happy with how things currently stand with ONE Championship.
Almeida, a jiu-jitsu legend who turned to MMA in 2021, is frustrated with the lack of fights he’s been presented by the organization since his last appearance – a showdown with Oumar Kane in August 2023. “Buchecha” makes his return Friday night at ONE Championship 169 in Bangkok. He takes on Amir Aliakbari in a heavyweight bout.
Almeida is not sure why it’s taken him 15 months to return to fighting, and he’s not content about it.
“No, I’ve been ready since the last fight,” Almeida told MMA Junkie when asked about why he’s been inactive. “Unfortunately that’s not up to me. That’s because of the organization, because I want to keep active, and I want to keep fighting, but I don’t know the reason to it. That’s why I was out. It wasn’t up to me.”
Almeida did have an active start to his MMA career. He competed four times in 11 months under ONE Championship. He was hoping the promotion would keep a slightly similar pace for him, as he’d like to fight at least three times a year, but that hasn’t been the case.
“In jiu-jitsu, I used to compete a lot, so to be sitting out for 15 months, for me, it was horrible,” Almeida explained. “It’s a bad experience for my career, and I’m not getting any younger, but it is what it is.”
Almeida told MMA Fighting’s Guillerme Cruz in Portuguese that Friday’s bout will be the last on his current contract. It’s unknown if he’ll re-sign with the promotion.
As of now, Almeida has one thing to focus on, and that’s his bout against Aliakbari, which he’s taking very seriously.
“We have like a similar record in ONE Championship,” Almeida said regarding Aliakbari. “Of course, he has a career before ONE, but he has four victories, I have four victories, and he has two loses, and I have one. So it’s pretty much similar to what we did in ONE Championship. Like I said, he fought Rizin and other events before that, so of course he has a lot of experience with me in MMA. He’s a tough opponent and has fought a lot of tough guys. It’s going to be a good fight, grappler vs. grappler, so it’s going to be really interesting for the audience.”
