Aung La N Sang Discusses the “Very, Very Sad” Situation in Myanmar

Aung La N Sang has had some professional setbacks of late, but they are put into perspective by the plight of his home country.

Inside the cage, the last year saw Aung La (26-12, 11-3 One) lose both of his titles to Reinier de Ridder. First, the former One two-division champion dropped his middleweight title after being submitted by via first-round rear-naked choke by De Ridder at One: Inside the Matrix in October 2020. Then, he was outclassed on the canvas by “The Dutch Knight” in the five-round light heavyweight main event of One on TNT 4 in April. After suffering back-to-back defeats, “The Burmese Python” reveled that he has been working hard to make up ground in grappling.

“Every loss, you have to learn from it and grow from it,” the 36-year-old told Sherdog. “If I don’t do that, what kind of fighter I’m going to be? What kind of athlete I’m going to be? I’ve been working on my ground game with Vagner Rocha, and I’ve been working on my grappling and wrestling as well.”

“The Burmese Python” also opened up about the current situation in Myanmar, where the Burmese military seized power in a coup d’etat in February.

“Things haven’t changed much,” he stated. “If anything, it’s going worse, you know? With the military coup, people are not working, economy is going really bad, inflation is really high, people don’t have many rights, internet and electricity are cut off whenever the military want. Right now, with the COVID, the new variant, the Delta variant has been killing a lot of people in Myanmar. It’s very, very sad.”

Tudor Leonte started writing about mixed martial arts in 2013 for Italian media outlets. His journey with Sherdog began in 2018 and now he covers One Championship and countless European shows. You can follow him on Twitter @MrTudorLeonte.