Wei Rui came up short in his bantamweight kickboxing title fight against Jonathan Haggerty at ONE 171 at Lusail Arena, Qatar on Thursday.
Haggerty came into the fight off a devastating knockout loss at the hands of Superlek Kiatmoo9 last year, which saw him relinquish the belt – and the Englishman produced a slow start, which he attributed afterwards to a dent in his self-confidence.
Wei fired off quick combinations of punches and elbows to kick off the bout and looked set to hand Haggerty his second consecutive loss.
But was nothing more than a highlight for Wei, who was second best for the remainder of the fight. Haggerty made a much more confident start to the second round and landed a glancing head kick before scoring with…