ONE Championship Issues Statement on Sage Northcutt’s Visa Situation

ONE Championship has responded to Sage Northcutt’s claims that the Singapore-based promotion was responsible for the cancelation of his ONE 165 lightweight clash against Shinya Aoki on Jan. 28 in Tokyo, Japan.

While Northcutt was set to face “Tobikan Judan” in a highly-anticipated bout on the pay-per-view, the organization announced that the American had withdrawn from the card due to unforeseen circumstances.

However, Northcutt shared a different version of events that led to his withdrawal in an Instagram post.

ONE Championship has now responded to Northcutt’s statement, describing the situation as a misunderstanding caused by “work visa processing issues.”

Furthermore, the promotion made it clear that it would like to alleviate all of Northcutt’s concerns and move to resolve the situation amicably.

“ONE Championship empathizes with Sage Northcutt in regards to the situation he faced at ONE 165, where two of his coaches were not allowed to corner him, leading to his withdrawal from the event.

Due to a change in external guidance from a third-party visa consultancy on Certificate of Eligibility (COE) requirements for all cornermen at ONE 165, there were work visa processing issues leading up to the event, which unfortunately impacted multiple athletes.

The ONE team communicated the ongoing issues to our athletes and their management, but there was clearly a misunderstanding with the options presented to Sage and his team.

Despite his recent comments, ONE values Sage’s partnership on a personal and professional level, and we hope that we can resolve this situation amicably.

We also hope our athletes understand that we were acting in their best interest in being 100% compliant with local laws, and that this was an isolated incident given our track record of successfully flying in athletes and their cornermen for hundreds of global events.”