Garry Tonon has been released by ONE FC, joining four other athletes shown the door as the organization continues to cut spending under significant financial pressure.
The Bangkok Post’s Nick Atkin, who has covered ONE Championship extensively, reported that Tonon was released alongside Magomed Akaev, Stefan Korodi, Amber Kitchen and Zafer Sayik. All five athletes were informed of their departures on Friday, with sources indicating they could be welcomed back should they rebuild momentum elsewhere. ONE Championship has since updated the athletes’ profile pages on its official website to reflect their new status.
For Tonon, the release comes a year after a unanimous decision loss to Shamil Gasanov at ONE FN 34 in Bangkok’s Lumpinee Stadium.
The release of Tonon and his four colleagues reflects a broader pattern of roster and organizational contraction at ONE Championship that has accelerated well into 2026. The promotion recently shuttered its women’s strawweight MMA division and released its athletes, including longtime champion Xiong Jingnan. Lowkick confirmed three of ONE’s most senior American executives, Vice President Rich Franklin, Senior Vice President of Competition Matt Hume and COO John Scheler, have all departed. There are signs more ONE FC executives will follow.
Their exits effectively ended whatever remained of ONE’s effort to build a foothold in the United States market, a project that produced only two American events, both in Colorado, before the planned Denver return was quietly cancelled and removed from the website.
Amazon Prime Video, which had broadcast ONE’s FN series to American audiences, reportedly chose not to renew its deal past 2025. ONE Championship’s financial reports provide the backdrop for these decisions. The promotion’s FY2024 figures showed $93.2 million in total revenue, but roughly 93% of broadcast revenue, its single largest category, was non-cash. Barter arrangements with broadcasters, where advertising slots were exchanged for airtime and their estimated value recorded as income, made up the bulk of those numbers. In actual cash terms, the promotion generated an estimated $19.5 million for the year while spending $28.4 million in operational costs. At year’s end, ONE held just $16 million in reserves. Accumulated losses since the promotion’s founding in 2011 have reached $576 million.
Rather than continuing to fund expansion into western markets, ONE is directing resources toward a monthly events series in Japan under the ONE Samurai banner, distributed through the U-Next platform, with a stated goal of reaching profitability by the end of 2026. That path has already developed complications. The promotion filed a $17 million lawsuit against Rodtang Jitmuangnon, its most prominent homegrown attraction, less than two weeks before he was scheduled to headline the inaugural ONE Samurai event.
For Tonon, who built a reputation as one of the most technically gifted submission grapplers ever to compete in MMA, the release closes a chapter that stretched nearly a decade.
