ONE Friday Fights 178: how Nong-O Hama beats Rodtang at 40

Nong-O Hama turns 40 today. On Friday he walks into Lumpinee Stadium to fight Rodtang Jitmuangnon, who is 29, over three rounds of flyweight Muay Thai at ONE Friday Fights 178. Rodtang is No. 2 in ONE's flyweight Muay Thai rankings and Nong-O is No. 3. The one sportsbook pricing the fight so far has Rodtang at -500 and Nong-O at +300.

That price says the old man is there to lose. I don't think the fight is that simple, so let's look at how Nong-O actually wins it.

The MMA math, and why it lies

Everybody will do the same sum this week. Jonathan Haggerty knocked Nong-O out in the first round at ONE Fight Night 9 in April 2023 and took his bantamweight title. Rodtang beat Haggerty twice, a five-round decision in August 2019 and a third-round TKO in January 2020. So Rodtang beats Nong-O, case closed.

Photo: Web Summit Qatar / CC BY 2.0

Those Rodtang wins over Haggerty are six and seven years old. The Haggerty who beat Nong-O was a different fighter at a different weight, and Nong-O was 36. Transitive results in striking are mostly a story about who matched up with whom on a given night. The more useful question is what has actually beaten Nong-O, and whether Rodtang does those things.

What beats Nong-O, read from his own record

Nong-O is 13-5 in ONE. Before Haggerty he won eight five-round title fights in a row, five of them by knockout. Here are the five losses:

Three of the five are knockouts, all since April 2023 and all inside two rounds. The strike counts we have point the same way. Asadula Imangazaliev, the flyweight champion, outlanded him 19 to 10 and dropped him once before finishing it 44 seconds into the second. Kiamran Nabati outlanded him 55 to 22 over three rounds.

The pattern is plain. When an opponent sits in front of Nong-O and makes him trade, the 40-year-old loses the exchange. That's the uncomfortable part of this preview, because sitting in front of you and trading is exactly what Rodtang does. He has finished Sok Thy, Haggerty, Edgar Tabares and Takeru Segawa. Against Haggerty in 2020 our numbers credit him with four knockdowns, and against Takeru at ONE 172 he scored two before the stoppage at 1:27 of the first round.

So the first rule for Nong-O is the obvious one. Don't trade.

The route: the Kongthoranee fights

His last three flyweight fights show the alternative, all against Kongthoranee Sor Sommai. Nong-O lost the first by split decision in February 2025, then won the next two by unanimous decision, in May 2025 and in June this year at ONE Friday Fights 160.

The body shots are the thread running through all three. Nong-O landed 25 body strikes in the split-decision loss, 26 in the rematch and 25 again in the third fight, where Kongthoranee managed 6. In that third fight Nong-O outlanded him 55 to 37, and both men scored a knockdown.

That is the Nong-O game. Kicks and knees to the body, a long lead leg, never giving the other man a head to hunt for. In Muay Thai the tool that stops a pressure fighter is the teep, the push kick to the stomach or hip. It costs the attacker his balance, breaks his forward momentum, and gives the judges something clean to look at. Nong-O is listed at 68 inches of reach to Rodtang's 65, small numbers that still matter to a man who wants every exchange to end at the end of his foot.

Rodtang does not come in clean, either. Against Haggerty in 2019 our strike count has Haggerty landing 172 to Rodtang's 125, and Rodtang still took the unanimous decision. He makes his living walking through shots to land the heavier ones (55 leg strikes and 51 body strikes in that fight). A fighter who wins that way gives away volume early. Nong-O has to bank that volume and not pay for it.

Three rounds, not five

Photo: Bruno Massami / CC BY 3.0

Most of Rodtang's career was built over five rounds. Haggerty twice, Walter Goncalves, Petchdam Petchyindee, Joseph Lasiri, Edgar Tabares and Jacob Smith at ONE 169 were all five-round fights, and the pressure in those fights paid off late.

Three rounds compresses that. If Nong-O can make round one his, with the teep, the body kick and a step back out of range, Rodtang has two rounds left to win it, not four. The last time Rodtang lost a Muay Thai fight in ONE was a three-round decision, against Superlek at 140 lbs in September 2023. It's his only Muay Thai loss in 14 ONE Muay Thai fights (13-1).

There is also rust on Rodtang's Muay Thai. His last fight under these rules was that five-round decision over Smith in November 2024. Since then he has fought twice under kickboxing rules against Takeru: the first-round knockout win, then a fifth-round TKO loss at ONE SAMURAI 1 on April 29, where our count has Takeru scoring three knockdowns. No elbows and next to no clinch work for two years, and then a 40-year-old who has spent his whole career using both.

What Rodtang does about it

To be fair to the other corner, here's what I'd tell Rodtang. Ignore the body kicks for a round if he has to, cut the ring off, and close the distance until Nong-O is forced to make a stand. Nong-O's three knockout losses all came against men who got close and stayed there, and Rodtang has four knockout wins in ONE that say he can do the same.

I doubt anyone holds Rodtang at the end of a teep for nine straight minutes. Nong-O doesn't have to. He has to win two rounds of it, keep his head off the center line, and make the judges watch the body work. It's the same fight he won twice against Kongthoranee.

None of that guarantees anything. The full card and start times are in our ONE Friday Fights 178 guide, and you can make your own call on the pick'em page. Happy birthday, Nong-O. It's a hell of a way to spend the week.