“A happy fighter is a dangerous fighter” - Nico Carrillo admits he is at his absolute best as a featherweight

ONE Championship featherweight Muay Thai standout 'King of the North' Nico Carrillo of Scotland has found success in his new weight class.

Once one of the top bantamweight strikers in the world's largest martial arts organization, Carrillo made the decision to return to featherweight following a heartbreaking loss to Nabil Anane earlier this year.

In his featherweight return, Carrillo scored an emphatic second-round finish of Thai veteran 'Killer Kid' Sitthichai Sitsongpeenong, looking absolutely fantastic while doing so.

Speaking to Conor Malone in a recent interview, Carrillo couldn't stop raving about competing at his natural weight class.

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'King of the North' said:

"It's super exciting, mate. It's super, super exciting. It feels like there's new life in me now, because before, getting matched came with this big dread of weight cut. So I would just link fighting to weight cutting, and that's when I said a happy fighter is a dangerous fighter, and I wasn't happy for so long there because I would go into fight camp and it would start well, and I was like, right, six weeks out, now I need to start cutting weight. And it's difficult. It's one of the hardest things in the world."

Needless to say, Carrillo has certainly showcased a newfound vigor at featherweight, and fans are definitely eager to see him back in the ring at the soonest possible time.

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Nico Carrillo admits he almost quit fighting had ONE Championship not called him up

'King of the North' Nico Carrillo admits he wanted to compete in ONE Championship so bad, and he grew frustrated that he wasn't getting noticed by the world's largest martial arts organization, until of course, he finally got the call.

He told Conor Malone:

"I was already a three-time world champion. I'd beat everybody in the domestic European scene–only thing left for me to do was get to ONE Championship, and they just weren't giving me the call. And so I started wrestling and doing stuff like that, and then I got the call from ONE Championship and it was like, right, back to Muay Thai, what I love to do. And then it was just up from there."

Today, Carrillo is one of the most exciting fighters in ONE.

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Edited by Tejas Rathi