Imagine how insane the entire country's gonna go if he wins. "
One of our guys just beat this BEHEMOTH of a black man that had, like, 30 pounds of muscle on him!!! If he can do that, we can do anything!" And if he loses, "
It was against a guy who had 30 pounds of muscle on him... our hero will do great next time, and even accepting the fight was a gigantic feat of courage."
And it'll make a fight between Ngalani and Vera very marketable if Alain wins.
Prachnio may also be injured or still have some grievances with ONE, so, in that case (since a third fight in a row with Bigdash ain't really that interesting-- not that a third fight's bad, but not in a row), this's better than any middleweight fight.
Maybe if he wins he'll try to become a two-divisional world champion and he'll be matched up with Roger Gracie next year in Myanmar.
That would be crazy.
When you only have one man to be proud of.
To be fair to the Burmese, the country was under one of the strictest military regimes in the world for, like, 40 years, and it's only been since, like, 2011 or so that the country's undergone reforms and now people from outside of the country can really be fans of stuff like Lethwei and know about things like the Rohingya genocide (which's been going on for a
long time and only gotten really popular over the last couple months.) And Asia's still a place where beating foreigners is a gigantic accomplishment in anything athletic, and even though the country had a lot of
great fighters in it (Tway Ma Shaung, Lone Chaw, Win Tun), the political situation of the country (and the niche sport of Lethwei being what it is) kept them from being able to accomplish that milestone of fighting foreign opposition.
Aung's been able to hold the distinction that's almost unheard of in the history of Burmese athletes, though, and he's had success against 100% foreign opposition. Literally, he hasn't fought
one person from Myanmar or from even Southeast-Asia. Americans, Canadians, Russians, Egyptians, Poles... he's
only fought international opponents.
And he's become a very high-level fighter and has a very fan-friendly, exciting style, so he can beat genuinely high-level guys, which just adds to his points and even makes him internationally-likable in the whole region of Southeast-Asia.
It makes real good sense that he's become a star.
