Nong-O Hama is 40 years old and ranked third in ONE’s flyweight Muay Thai division. On Friday the 13th at Lumpinee Stadium, he beat the man ranked second. Nong-O took a unanimous decision over Rodtang Jitmuangnon at The Inner Circle 38. It was the opening quarterfinal of the 2026 to 2027 ONE Flyweight Muay Thai World Grand Prix, and it sends the former bantamweight champion into a semifinal with Shimon Yoshinari.
The results sheet gives the verdict without a blow-by-blow. So what follows comes from the styles, the records and the context. Where I’m reading the fight, I’ll say so.
Why the matchup tilted toward Nong-O
Combat Press framed this fight well in its preview. Rodtang built his flyweight reign by forcing opponents to fight at his pace. Nong-O has spent his career doing the same thing without needing to match the other guy’s volume. Those two ideas collide directly. A pressure fighter only wins the tempo war if the opponent agrees to have one. My read is that Nong-O never had to agree. A veteran who can control where and when exchanges happen, without trying to out-throw a volume puncher, takes away the thing that makes Rodtang dangerous. That is how you get three judges on the same side against him.
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Nong-O’s prefight talk pointed in two directions. He told BJPenn.com he would match aggression if Rodtang brought it: “I’m fully prepared to bang with him.” He also said he would have to find Rodtang’s openings gradually: “I’d have to solve the puzzle step-by-step, adjusting as [the fight] unfolds.” The second quote is the one I believe. Promising a war is fine for fight week, but adjusting as the fight unfolds is how a 40-year-old beats a younger man who wants a brawl. Nong-O also predicted that Rodtang would press him early because Rodtang is the younger fighter. He clearly had a plan for that.
The Rodtang side of this is harder to read. Friday was his return to Muay Thai after Takeru Segawa stopped him in the fifth round of their kickboxing rematch in April. That was the first stoppage loss of Rodtang’s ONE career, and now he has back-to-back defeats. I won’t pretend to know what the Takeru fight did to him. But a fighter whose whole identity is walking through fire is now 0-2 in his last two, and a Grand Prix doesn’t offer a soft rebound fight.
There is one positive on the weight front. Last November at ONE 173, this same fight fell apart. Nong-O said he failed his hydration test, and Rodtang got sick with muscle cramps after making weight. This time Combat Press reported that both men cleared weight and hydration testing on Thursday. I’m always glad when a fight is decided by the fighters rather than by the scale, and these two have 542 career wins between them, per BJPenn.com.
Shimon passes the Ghazali comparison test
The other quarterfinal opened ONE Friday Fights 178. Its result was the semifinal pairing ONE announced on X almost immediately: Shimon Yoshinari against Nong-O, which the promotion called a “generational Muay Thai clash.”
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Shimon beat Ramadan Ondash, known as The Scorpion, by unanimous decision and went to 7-0 in ONE. The interesting detail is the common opponent. Both men had already beaten Johan Ghazali on the way into the bracket. Shimon earned his ONE contract by beating him, and Ondash’s two flyweight wins came against Suriyanlek Por Yenying and Ghazali. Ghazali was backstage checking in on Ondash before the walk, according to ONE’s own feed. So the man both fighters had beaten was in one corner’s ear, and the result still went the other way.
Ondash is only 20. He signed with ONE at strawweight and was 2-0 since moving up. BJPenn.com ran a headline saying Ondash promised to end Shimon’s unbeaten run, and another saying Shimon was targeting a quick finish. Neither happened. Shimon didn’t get the early stoppage he talked about, which matters for the semifinal projection. He had knocked out Suablack Tor Pran49 in Japan in September, so the power is there. Against a bigger-for-the-weight young fighter who had moved up and kept winning, he settled for a clear decision instead. ONE’s post-fight graphic called the performance masterful. A unanimous decision win over a rising flyweight is a fine result even without a highlight.
Shimon is also a former WBC Muay Thai world champion. He looked loose enough before the bout that ONE posted him doing light sparring with Nadaka in the back.
A rough day for the Jitmuangnon name
Rodtang wasn’t the only Jitmuangnon to lose in Bangkok. On the Friday Fights 178 card, Anar Mammadov, who fights as Atilla, knocked out Superlek Jitmuangnon at 2:08 of Round 1. Ali Al-Kinani stopped Kumanngern Jitmuangnon at 1:24 of Round 2. That is three losses for the name in one day, and two of them were knockouts. For Superlek especially, a first-round KO loss is a jarring result.
The other big finish at The Inner Circle 38 came from PTT Apichart Farm. He stopped Hamza Rachid at 2:37 of Round 1. The fight was listed under the name PTT Vor Rujirawong on the r/MMA card. Banluelok Sitwatcharachai also finished Mya Lone Chaw at 1:04 of Round 2.
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The semifinal pick
Nong-O told BJPenn.com he considered it an honor just to be picked for the elite eight at his age. He has turned that honor into a semifinal. He has also had a mixed year. Asadula Imangazaliev knocked him out in a flyweight title fight in March. He rebounded in June by beating Kongthoranee Sor Sommai in their third meeting, and now he owns a win over the division’s longtime former champion.
The March loss is what I keep coming back to. Rodtang pressures and piles on volume, and Nong-O’s game is built to neutralize that. Imangazaliev showed that a fighter who can end things with one shot gets a different kind of chance against him. Shimon is unbeaten in ONE, a former world champion, and has a recent knockout on his record. My read is that Shimon is the worse matchup for Nong-O than Rodtang was, because he doesn’t need to win the pace to win the fight.
I’m taking Shimon, but not by a wide margin. Nong-O has already beaten one younger man who came in believing he could push the veteran around.