ONE 157 has just finished and both of the Ruotolo brothers managed to emerge victorious with a pair of very convincing performances. First up was Kade Ruotolo facing off against one of the biggest legends of Japanese MMA and grappling, Shinya Aoki, and he was followed by his brother Kade taking on one of John Danaher’s star pupils, Garry Tonon. In the end the pair’s results were slightly different but their performances inside the cage were equally as impressive as one another.
Kade looked determined to take down Aoki and one of the highlights of their standing battle was a moment where he leapt off the side of the cage to pull guard and attempted to use the increased momentum to transition straight to Aoki’s back. There were extended portions where he was on Aoki’s back and fighting to sink in the rear-naked choke or transition to other options, but Aoki’s defense was rock-solid and he didn’t ever look too concerned with the young grappler on his back. In the final seconds of the match, Kade managed to lock up a buggy choke from guard and attempted to bait Aoki into passing to side control so that he could cinch it tighter, but Aoki rode out the choke until the bell sounded and lost a decision for his troubles.
When Garry Tonon took to the cage to face Tye Ruotolo he looked incredibly calm and as though he was having fun in the moment, although that may have proved to be his downfall. He battled against Tye standing for a short time until he was tossed to the ground by him and couldn’t quite recover. As Tye pressured forward he managed to secure the pass by moving all the way through to North-South and immediately started working on a D’arce Choke. Tonon attempted to defend the choke but it was already too far gone and he ended up tapping within just two minutes of total grappling time.
The Ruotolo brothers have been regarded as the future of BJJ for quite some time and there was a great deal of fanfare around the pair signing for ONE Championship before their debut fights at ONE 157 were even announced. As the martial arts promotion appears to be kicking things into high gear for their grappling section by signing a whole host of BJJ stars, it appears as though the Ruotolo brothers will be the ones to beat for anyone looking to claim the inaugural ONE Championship submission grappling titles in their respective weightclasses.
The full ONE 157 event, including the Ruotolo brothers taking on Garry Tonon and Shinya Aoki, was broadcast live on May 20th on the ONE Championship official YouTube Channel and is available to watch below:
