Who’s Number One have just announced that their next event, the twentieth in their history, will be entitled ‘Night of Champions’ and has been scheduled for October 1st, 2023. Although there’s no news yet on who will be competing at the event, the promotion has confirmed that there will be an astounding 6 title-fights in one night. Fans who’ve been paying attention would have already known that there was supposed to be a Who’s Number One event in October, as Gordon Ryan had inadvertently let that slip during a recent interview with Bruce Buffer.
Ryan was explaining the timescale for his return to BJJ competition and he revealed that he was targeting a return at a then-unnamed WNO event in October. It seems clear then that, assuming it all goes to plan, one of those title-fights will be in the heavyweight division where Ryan is the champion after defeating Pedro Marinho for the vacant belt approximately a year ago. There’s quite a few other possibilities as there are plenty of WNO champions who would no doubt be eager to compete on such a stacked event, including the two champions who featured on the most recent WNO event: Ffion Davies and Dante Leon.
Given that there’s so many titles on the line at Who’s Number One: Night of Champions, it’s possible that the promotion has also decided to introduce gi titles as well. Up until now, all of their titles have been exclusively available in no gi competition and they haven’t mentioned any intention to introduce gi titles. Nicholas Meregali recently starred in a main event gi match and given that he’s been vocal about his desire to increase the attention that gi competition gets, he’d be a prime candidate for the first ever WNO gi title.
FloGrappling announced that Who’s Number One: Night of Champions was booked for October 1st, 2023 in a recent post to their official Instagram account:
