The Ruotolo brothers have had their ONE Championship debuts announced and they will both be competing at an event on the 20th May against Garry Tonon and Shinya Aoki. The brothers signed a contract to compete in the quickly developing submission grappling division of ONE Championship recently that also included the ability for them to make their professional MMA debuts in the future. There’s still no news on yet on when they will compete in MMA but the brothers have gotten their first grappling matches for the promotion lined up incredibly quickly.
Tye Ruotolo will be facing potentially the best grappler under contract with ONE Championship right now, Garry Tonon, while Kade will be taking on the Japanese MMA and grappling legend Shinya Aoki. The first match will set up an interesting storyline for the rest of 2022 because Garry Tonon will actually be competing in the 77kg division at the ADCC world championships alongside Kade Ruotolo after the former won his place at the East Coast trials. If Tonon can overcome Tye on May 20th then Kade will no doubt be eager to avenge his brother’s loss if he gets the opportunity to do so towards the end of the year.
Kade’s match against Aoki has significantly less ramifications for the future, but it won’t be any less of an interesting match for one of ATOS’ latest black belts. Aoki is not only one of the most underrated MMA fighters to ever compete at the lower weightclasses, but he owes most of his victories to his incredible grappling ability. Known as the ‘Master of Flying Submissions’, Aoki is easily one of the most exciting grapplers around and a match between him and Kade Ruotolo is almost certain to produce fireworks for the fans.
The news of the Tye and Kade Ruotolo making their ONE Championship submission grappling debuts against Garry Tonon and Shinya Aoki respectively was announced in a post to the promotion’s official Instagram account:
