Shinya Aoki is returning to MMA for a fourth fight with his rival Eduard Folayang at ONE 172 on March 23rd, 2025. Aoki only made two appearances for ONE Championship last year and only one of them was a professional MMA fight. He made the most of the only opportunity he did have though, as he submitted John Lineker in the first round of their fight at ONE 165. That was actually the only MMA fight that Aoki has had in a little over two years at this point, as he’s spent more time competing in the ONE Championship submission grappling divisions instead.
His last match was a submission loss to Cole Abate at ONE Fight Night 26 and his sole match of 2023 actually ended in a very similar fashion. He was a booked in a catchweight bout against Mikey Musumeci at ONE Fight Night 15 and was also submitted with a leglock then. Prior to that Aoki was riding a two-fight losing streak in his professional MMA career and given that he’s a 41 year-old veteran of 60 fights, there was plenty of speculation about his retirement. Aoki has been a competitor for over three decades across several different combat sports, and he’s been at the very top all the way through.
Aoki is even a two-time lightweight world champion at ONE Championship and his rivalry with Folayang is an important part of that story. He first won the title in 2013 and defended it for over 3 years until he had his first fight with Folayang, where he lost by TKO and was dethroned. It took almost another 3 years for the rematch to come to fruition, but Aoki got his revenge with a submission win and regained his title. Their trilogy fight came in 2021 at ONE on TNT 4 and Aoki got another submission win to take the lead in their series 2-1.
ONE Championship announced the news that Shinya Aoki was fighting Eduard Folayang for the fourth time at ONE 172 in a recent post to their official Instagram account:
