Amaar Burton

His nickname, “Reug Reug,” means someone who is invisible. But anonymity is no longer a reality for professional fighter Oumar Kane, the new ONE Championship heavyweight MMA world champion. In the main event of the ONE 169 show in Thailand on Friday, Kane won a five-round split decision over Anatoly Malykhin, who entered the ring as a three-division champion — holding the promotion’s heavyweight, light heavyweight, and middleweight MMA title belts.

The 2024-25 NFL season has reached the halfway point. Entering Week 9, the reigning champions in Kansas City are undefeated (7-0) and sitting in pole position to win a third straight Super Bowl, a popular preseason title pick in Detroit owns the best record in the NFC (6-1), and one division (the NFC North) has nothing but teams with winning records. But we’re not here to hear about winners. They’re getting enough attention.

Knockouts, while far from a rarity, are not the most common way for Muay Thai and kickboxing bouts to end. Chalk it up to contests that are typically scheduled for just three to five rounds, competitors using styles that focus a lot on strikes to the legs and body instead of head-hunting for KOs, plus an international talent pool that has a lot more fleet-footed featherweights than lumber-fisted heavyweights. That’s where Akram Hamidi is an outlier.