Josh Thomson Blames 'Poorly Run' ONE Championship For Sage Northcutt Fiasco: 'I Was Part Of The First Show They Did In Beijing...'

Josh Thomson has weighed in on the unfortunate ongoing situation between Sage Northcutt and ONE Championship. 

Northcutt's planned ONE 165 fight with Shinya Aoki was canceled last month. Taking to Facebook, Northcutt gave his take on the situation, during which he slammed ONE for how they handled communications and approval issues his coaching team were facing. 

"The Punk" has done commentary duties for ONE in the past, and recently discussed issues with how the promotion is run on the WEIGHING IN podcast.

"They're not a horrible organization, they've just been poorly run," Thomson said. "What I mean by that is I have no idea why they signed these fighters to contracts and lock them in, and then don't fight them, but put them on monthly salaries which, look, I think is absolutely amazing if you still continue to fight them. Some fighters will wait a year to get a fight."

'They're Spending So Much Money' - Josh Thomson On ONE Championship

Thomson went on to explain ONE's expansive approach to doing business in the Asian market. A key issue he sees with it is the whopping levels of spending the Singapore-based promotion are doing to net elite fighters. 

"The shows that they were doing before, when I was working for them, they would do shows in Kuala Lumpur, they would do shows in Jakarta, they would do shows in Manila," Thomson said. "All over Asia. I was part of their first show they did in Beijing, the first show they ever did in mainland China... They are trying to do things that no one else has done in that Asia market... the problem that I see is that they're spending so much money on getting the top level fighters."

Thomson explained that many high-level fighters aren't interested in traveling out east to perform, where they fear they won't get as much international exposure at they would get in the US. 

When it comes to Sage Northcutt, Thomson wasn't definite on why ONE handled the situation in the manner that they did. However, he confirmed there's a long history of fighters struggling to get their cornermen approved for shows in the promotion. 

"I have no idea why they would do what they did with Sage Northcutt," Thomson said. "But I do know there has been problems before in the past with fighters having their corners approved. Whether it was plane tickets, whether it was visas, whether it was them getting to the venue on time, whatever it was, they had problems before."