ONE Championship: Stamp vs Zamboanga to headline Denver return; multiple headline bouts in the works

Stamp Fairtex and Denice Zamboanga will unify the ONE Championship atomweight MMA titles when the promotion heads back to the United States later this year — with several other big headline fights planned.

Now, the Asia-based martial arts promotion has confirmed it will return back to Denver, Colorado on Aug. 1 for ONE 173.

That numbered event will again come to Ball Arena, the home of the N.B.A.’s Denver Nuggets.

A stacked card topped with multiple title fights is expected, the Bangkok Post has been told, with the clash between Stamp and Zamboanga as just one of several planned feature fights.

ONE has been bringing in bigger crowds than wrestling joint WEE for last September’s ONE 168 show at Ball Arena, according to reports. It drew 8,583 paid spectators, 10,331 in total, to a live gate of $1,280,335.

ONE Championship Chairman and CEO Chatri Sityodtong plans to top himself this time, telling the Bangkok Post last week in Qatar to expect the promotion’s next card in the United States to be “insane.”

Stamp was scheduled to top the promotion’s final event of the year in Denver opposite strawweight MMA champion Xiong Jingnan, as well as ONE 167, which will take place in June 2024 at Bangkok’s Impact Arena, before a serious knee injury.

Thailand’s Stamp, the reigning divisional atomweight champion, had surgery last summer on a meniscus tear and has not fought since.

She told the Bangkok Post that there are plans for her to do a kickboxing tuneup in May or thereabouts, to get some ring rust off after her last fight in September 2023.

In her long absence, the Philippines’ Zamboanga was crowned interim champion in January, stopping Alyona Rassohyna by second-round TKO at Bangkok’s famed Lumpinee Stadium.