Garry Tonon hasn’t given up on his title aspirations.

Despite getting knocked out in his first ONE Championship title fight last year, Tonon (7-1 MMA) is still in search of the promotion’s featherweight belt, and even beyond. He’s not going to let the defeat discourage him from his goal of becoming featherweight champ, and then challenging to become a two-division ONE Championship titleholder.

“I definitely want to be a featherweight champion at ONE Championship,” Tonon told MMA Junkie. “I’ve always had my eyes even further than that. I came in this organization watching Martin Nguyen, who was a two-division champion. I want that fight, but would also want to do the same thing he was able to do. I know getting ahead of myself here because we haven’t won this championship yet, but that’s what I would love to do.

“I have high ambition for my career and my abilities, but the featherweight title needs to come first.”

Tonon returns this Friday at ONE Fight Night 12, as he takes on Shamil Gasanov. This will be Tonon’s second fight since he was knocked out in less than a minute by Thanh Le back in March 2022 for the ONE Championship featherweight title. It also marked Tonon’s first career defeat.

There’s a lot the decorated grappler learned, even though the bout was just 56 seconds.

” Looking back at that moment, the most relevant takeaway for me is that if … I don’t think that I should prioritize the idea of grabbing the leg and falling back as like a preliminary strategy as often just because it carries some risks, even though I have won fights very quickly like that,” Ton said. “… I think I have other skills that would make winning a fight much safer than doing that. It’s good to have on my tool belt, it’s also not like I’m never going to do that again.”