ONE Championship is back this weekend in Shanghai, China. Keeping up their recent trend, the organisation has chosen to highlight a Super Series Muay Thai championship bout in the headline spot. the bout is an undeniable main event worthy contest with promotional superstar and dual Muay Thai and Kickboxing world champion Stamp Fairtex of Thailand taking on fast rising fan favourite and 2 x world Muay Thai world champion Alma Juniku from Australia, The Thai fighter will be seeking the first defence of the Muay Thai world championship she won against United States prospect Janet Todd in February.

The fight holds stakes beyond the allure of the ONE Super Series world title, as whoever comes out on top has the potential to become the global face of female Muay Thai thanks to the fanfare held by both fighters and the promotional power of ONE Championship.

Stamp Fairtex

Hailing from Rayong, North East Thailand, Stamp has been competing in her home country’s national sport since the age of 5. In 2017, when Pattaya super camp Fairtex began expanding to build a world-class female fight team she was on the shortlist for potential acquisitions. She initially caught the eye of ONE championship brass with a strong showing in Rich Franklin’s “ONE: Warrior Series” competing in Mixed Martial Arts, but when ONE expanded their programming to add Muay Thai and Kickboxing leagues, her wealth of experience made her the perfect candidate to seek glory in the striking arts.

A self-described knee fighter, Stamp showed the well roundedness of her arsenal as she took to kickboxing to unseat Atomweight world champion Kai Ting Chuang, demonstrating strong centre ring presence and fight altering power by controlling the bout with right kicks at distance and intercepting Chuang’s forward pressure with short right hands.

Stamp utilised her experience and ability to read the bout by firing her right kick to establish her power and shut down the middle range, combination oriented exchanges that are typical of the ruleset with an efficient single strike attack. Once she had found her right kick with enough authority to keep Chuang at an outside range Stamp creates openings by utilising rhythm breaking hip feints and wide sweeping steps to safely cover distance and follow her opponent around the ring while landing off-beat kicks and shutting down potential counters.

Against Chuong, Stamp’s hip feints and rhythm breaking tactics continued to create openings and shut down her opponent’s offence as the bout progressed by allowing her to change the angle of the kick and turn in into a rear leg teep, holding her centre ring position and keeping the fight at the long range that allows her to keep having success with her right kick.



We got to see Stamp with the freedom to use her full arsenal when she took on Janet Todd for the ONE Super Series Muay Thai world title, and she demonstrated that when armed with her full clinch and knee arsenal she is more interested in holding the fight at closer range. Against Todd, Stamp was content to stalk forward and stick to her opponent, opening up with a more hands-oriented attack and stalking her opponent towards the ropes, forcing her to engage and creating the opening for Stamp to press the fight into the clinch.

Todd was able to prevent Stamp from entering the clinch with her desired posture or hip position and thus was able to fight off many of the throws that have seen from her in other ONE appearances, but Stamp changed her tactic well and played the long game in the clinch, making Todd carry her weight and landing knees to the mid section in multiples with whatever space she had. As the fight progressed the threat of exhausting clinch exchanges and mounting damage from knees allowed Stamp to fight more openings for her hands in combination as Todd widened her guard in anticipation of an oncoming clinch.

Stamp’s aggression, power and willingness to walk down opponents have combined with her knee-fighting roots to make her a crowd pleaser who is well suited to an international style of fighting. Against Juniku she will deal with a similar breed of relentlessness.

Alma Juniku

Hailing from Brisbane, Australia and fighting out of Modern Warrior Muay Thai, the 18-year-old Juniku is a fresh face on the adult Muay Thai scene but owns two recent victories over world class opposition in Yolanda Schmidt and Zaza Sor Aree, the latter of which saw her crowned dual WBC and IPCC world champion and assert herself as one of the top female Thaiboxers in the world.

What we see from the challenger in this bout is a style not dissimilar from her opponent, Juniku likes to take centre ring and keep opponents at bay with powerful right side attacks. Where Stamp prefers to send her kicks up to the mid section Alma has been known to chop away at her opponents’ lead legs. This was on full display in her title winning showing against Zaza, where she made her presence known from the opening bell pulling back from kicks and retaliating with power low kicks.

As the fight with Zaza progressed Juniku’s low kicks added up to the point where Zaza could not comfortably enter in and began back peddling, which allowed the Australian to assert her dominance and mount a stalking, elbow heavy offence that eventually forced a stoppage in the fourth round.

Against the formidable Yolanda Schmidt, Juniku showed a hard starting, low kick heavy attack as well as an ability to measure with a lead left hook to find a home for a right hand down the pipe.

While a win over Schmidt is an impressive feature on Juniku’s resumé, it is worth noting the bout was not without controversy. Despite having success by laying out difficult to read footwork patterns and landing powerful low kicks and right hands, as well as showing deadly accuracy with cutting elbows, she demonstrated visible discomfort when the strong and clinch savvy Schmidt would tie things up.

Turning one’s back in the clinch is not only perhaps the clearest scoring no-no in Muay Thai, it leaves a wide list of openings for unanswered knees and elbows. For Juniku the fight is best contested at the outside range, picking away at Stamp’s lead leg to slow her entry and inflict damage to her power side. Juniku’s techniques have their best chance of success if she gains the champions respect early stays on the front foot, not allowing the the Thai to push her back and keep her at kicking range.

She who dares wins

A quick analysis of this fight tells us that both fighters like to hold centre ring and do their best work once they have their opponents back peddling. Both have strong front-foot attributes and the early goings of the fight will be a duel of who can get their game going first. Alma has been caught on the wrong end of clinch battles which Stamp will no doubt look to exploit as the fight progresses, however in the latter stages of Stamp’s bout with Janet Todd there were signs of a caution-to-the-wind approach to boxing in the pocket nullifying some of Stamp’s pullback counters and forcing her to run herself on to punches as she swayed back into range. If Alma can bait Stamp into trading like this her power will be a factor, but navigating the power right kick of Stamp is no easy task. Looking at both fighters styles it is a high possibility that the first one to find their rhythm enough to send the other back peddling could be on her way to victory.

This is a match made in heaven between two of the most promising young stars in Muay Thai, The aggressive demeanour and fight stopping ability of both fighters means the momentum of the fight can swing in either direction at any time and the youth of both competitors means we could very well be witnessing the first bout in a multi-fight series. You can catch it for free on the ONE Championship app and see who rises to the occasion to take the top spot in female Muay Thai