Amir
Aliakbari could soon put himself in position to ask for a
bigger piece of the pie in the Singapore-based
One
Championship promotion.
The ambitious 34-year-old Iranian will lock horns with former
heavyweight champion
Brandon Vera
in a featured
ONE 164 attraction on Saturday at the Mall of Asia Arena in
Pasay, Philippines. Aliakbari has rattled off six wins across his
past eight outings. He last competed at ONE on Prime Video 1, where
he took care of onetime
Cage Warriors Fighting Championship titleholder
Mauro
Cerilli with elbow strikes in the second round of their Aug. 26
encounter.
As Aliakbari moves ever closer to his showdown with Vera, here are
five things you might not know about him:
1. Past grievances make him a controversial figure.
Aliakbari was a two-time gold medalist in Greco-Roman wrestling at
the FILA World Wrestling Championships, having won the prestigious
competition in 2010 and again in 2013. However, he was stripped of
his second medal and received a lifetime ban following a second
offense for doping. A previous run-in with governing authorities
had cost him an opportunity to compete at the 2012 Summer Olympics,
where he likely would have been considered one of the
favorites.
2. He was a late arrival.
The 6-foot-3, 250-pound heavyweight did not make his professional
mixed martial arts debut until the age of 27, as he needed just 17
seconds to put away Hyung Chul-Lee with punches at a Full Metal
Dojo event on Oct. 31, 2015 in Bangkok. Aliakbari accepted his
second assignment a little more than a month later and picked up a
62-second technical knockout of
Radu
Spinghel at Real Fight Championship 3.
3. Uphill climbs do not faze him.
Aliakbari entered the 2016
Rizin Fighting Federation Openweight Grand Prix with a 2-0
record and proceeded to advance to the tournament final with
victories over
Joao
Isidoro Almeida,
Heath Herring
and
Valentin
Moldavsky. His run ended with a knockout loss to
Mirko “Cro
Cop” Filipovic, but he had nevertheless cemented himself as a
prospect to watch in the heavyweight division.
4. He chose proven allies.
The Tehran, Iran, native trains out of an
American Kickboxing Academy affiliate in Thailand, which opened
under
Ultimate Fighting Championship veteran
Mike Swick in
2014.
Manel Kape,
Anastasia
Yankova,
Soa Palelei
and
Vaso
Bakocevic are among those who have dropped anchor at the
Southeast Asia gym.
5. He tends to minimize his time.
All three of Aliakbari’s losses—Filipovic,
Ji Won Kang
and
Anatoliy
Malykhin were the perpetrators—and seven of his 11 victories
have occurred inside one round. In addition to his routs of
Chul-Lee, Spinghel and Almeida, he has victimized
Shelton
Graves,
Denis
Smoldarev,
Tyler King
and
Geronimo
dos Santos in short order.