ONE Fight Night 46 results: Hemetsberger knocks out Diachkova
ONE Fight Night 46 results: Stella Hemetsberger KOs Natalia Diachkova to keep the strawweight Muay Thai title, Nico Carrillo rolls on, Team Lakay eats an upset.
The knock on Stella Hemetsberger, if you were determined to find one, was that she wins on paper. Both of her title fights against Jackie Buntan went to the scorecards, the second by split decision, and there was a version of Friday night where the Austrian collected another five rounds of clean, unspectacular championship rounds and we all nodded politely at breakfast.
She had other ideas. At ONE Fight Night 46 at Lumpinee Stadium in Bangkok, Hemetsberger knocked out Natalia Diachkova in the third round to keep the ONE strawweight Muay Thai world title, her first defense of the belt she took from Buntan last September and her third straight win in a title fight. She is now 6-0 in ONE, she holds the division's Muay Thai and kickboxing crowns at the same time, and the "decision fighter" asterisk is officially retired. In our weekend preview I picked her to win on the cards, reasoning that Diachkova carried the one-punch danger and the champion carried the craft. Half credit: the craft turned out to include the finish.
Photo: Дьячкова / CC BY-SA 4.0
Spare a thought for Diachkova, because the arc here is brutal. Both of her losses in a 6-2 ONE run are title fights, and both are stoppages: Smilla Sundell halted her in 2024, and now this. Everything in between was violence in her favor, including the one-round flattening of Fahsai Aor Yutthachai in May that earned her this shot. She hits harder than almost anyone in the division, and she keeps meeting champions who are simply better for longer. There is no shame in the resume, but the third shot, if it comes, will be the hardest one to sell.
On to the rest of the card:
Nico Carrillo stays terrifying. The Scot took a featherweight kickboxing bout against Zhou Jiaqiang and ended it with a second-round knockout, his fourth straight win since the Nabil Anane loss. I picked Carrillo by knockout in the preview, which I mention because being exactly right happens rarely enough that I intend to enjoy it. He is 8-1 in ONE with stoppages of Nong-O, Saemapetch, and Sitthichai on the ledger, and at this point the only interesting question is which champion has to deal with him next.
The upset of the night hit Team Lakay. Jhanlo Mark Sangiao, who had won five of six in ONE with every single win coming by submission, walked into a first-round knockout from Brazil's Marcos Aurelio in their bantamweight MMA bout. Aurelio dropped his ONE debut in January and has now finished two in a row, a submission in March and this. For Sangiao the lesson is an old one: when your entire highlight reel is grappling, the striking exchanges you have to survive to get there are the tax. He is 24, this is recoverable, but the rebuild starts on the feet.
Kana got back in the win column. The Japanese atomweight outpointed Yu Yau Pui in a kickboxing bout, a unanimous decision that steadies her after the loss to Vero in May. Her November win over Stamp Fairtex still reads as the best result on her recent run, and a rebound fight handled cleanly keeps her in the conversation near the top of the division.
The rest, quickly. Viet Anh Do ground out a third-round TKO of Davi Brandāo in flyweight MMA, the only finish on the card's back half. Ruan Alvarenga took the submission grappling match against Meyram Maquine Alves on the cards. Magdalena Czaban outworked Natalie Salcedo to a unanimous decision in atomweight MMA, and Denis Souza Jr. did the same to Dmitrii Kovtun in bantamweight kickboxing.
Four stoppages in eight bouts, three of them knockouts, and not one of them needed the judges to explain it afterward. The main event delivered the thing title fights are supposed to deliver: an answer. Hemetsberger is not a points collector who survives championship rounds. She is the best strawweight striker in the promotion's stable, in either ruleset, and she now has the highlight to prove it.
The weekend is not done with us. UFC 330 goes tonight in Philadelphia with two title fights of its own, and Lumpinee reloads with ONE Friday Fights 167 next week. Sleep is for the offseason, whenever that is.