ONE Championship have just announced that Cole Abate will be facing Shinya Aoki at ONE Fight Night 26 on December 6th, 2024. It’s a battle between two completely different generations of competitors, as Aoki is a combat sports veteran and Abate is in the middle of the transition from top prospect to elite competitor. This is a true battle between youth and experience, and the difference in age between the two grapplers is not one that can be easily overlooked either. Abate actually just a few days shy of his 20th birthday, whereas Aoki was actually already older than that back when Abate was born.
In fact, Aoki was a Judo black belt with several MMA fights and even a few submission grappling matches on his resume by the time Abate was born. When Abate discovered Jiu-Jitsu at the age of 5, Aoki had already made his ADCC debut and won both the Shooto welterweight and WAMMA lightweight world championships. It’s not as if Aoki has slowed down since hitting his 40s either, he’s still an active MMA fighter and was most recently seen submitting John Lineker at ONE 165. Although he’s known for his extensive MMA career, he’s also been pretty active in submission grappling recently as well.
Aoki has been competing in grappling matches for ONE Championship since 2017, even facing Kade Ruotolo at ONE 157. Aoki wasn’t successful in that appearance but it didn’t deter him and he took on another huge challenge in his next grappling match for the promotion, facing Mikey Musumeci at ONE Fight Night 15. That was another loss unfortunately, so Shinya Aoki will be eager to get back in the win column by beating Cole Abate. On the other side of things, Abate will want to make a big impression in his promotional debut after he signed with ONE Championship just a few weeks ago.
This match between Aoki and Abate isn’t the only submission grappling match that’s been booked for the same event either. Later on in the card, Danielle Kelly will be challenging Mayssa Bastos in a rematch for the title that she recently lost to her. There’s no news yet on whether any other grappling matches will be booked for the same event, but ONE Championship have gone on a spree of signing top competitors recently. They now have a ton of elite talent that they could match up for the event; including the legendary Marcelo Garcia, who has recently decided to come out of retirement.
ONE Championship announced the news that Shinya Aoki and Cole Abate were facing each other at ONE Fight Night 26 in a recent post to their official Instagram account:
