ONE Championship

A 31-year-old challenger with a habit of ending fights early gets a second crack at the title that got away from her once before.

Natalia Diachkova challenges two-sport World Champion Stella Hemetsberger for the ONE Women’s Strawweight Muay Thai World Title in the main event of ONE Fight Night 46, streaming live in US primetime this Friday, August 14, from Bangkok’s Lumpinee Stadium. The Russian opened her ONE Championship run with four consecutive wins on the weekly series to earn a six-figure contract in 2024, three of them by knockout.

Her first World Title opportunity did not go her way, but two statement victories since have put her back in line for another shot. Four of her six wins under the ONE banner have come by first-round knockout, a finishing rate that marks her as one of the division’s most explosive strikers, most recently a stoppage of Fahsai Aor Yutthachai at ONE Friday Fights 152 this past May.

“For a long time, I’ve been tortured by injustice. Maybe I imagined it myself, though, but I just couldn’t explain some things to myself. Like, why do I train for so many years, and I failed psychologically in the title fight? Why is it always this way,” she said.

Natalia Diachkova brings early finishes to Lumpinee

Hemetsberger has built her championship run on five-round composure rather than single knockout moments, closing out both of her title-winning fights against Jackie Buntan over the full distance. Diachkova’s game plan operates on the opposite clock entirely.

Whichever quality wins out on August 14, early knockout power against proven championship-rounds composure, will decide who leaves Lumpinee Stadium still holding two-sport gold.

“I realized that everything that happened to me was for a reason, and I guess I’m thankful for it. All the changes that ought to have happened to me happened, and now I’m exactly where I should be,” she said.

This article appeared first on BJPENN.COM