Ben Woolliss Looks Back On 11-Year Battle With Crohn’s Disease Before ONE Fight Night 43
Ben Woolliss did not arrive in ONE Championship to ease his way in. He took his debut on nine days’ notice, stopped a former world champion in the first round, and then told anyone within earshot that he was here to be the best striker in the world. That is not the language of a man who feels he has time to waste.
The Grimsby-born, two-time kickboxing world champion faces former ONE Bantamweight Kickboxing World Champion Petchtanong Petchfergus in a bantamweight kickboxing bout at ONE Fight Night 43: Tang vs. Gasanov on Prime Video on Friday, May 15, live in U.S. primetime from Lumpinee Stadium in Bangkok, Thailand.
The backstory that makes his urgency make sense is 11 years long. Woolliss was diagnosed with Crohn’s disease and colitis in his mid-20s, conditions that stripped him of seven years of competition during the period of his career when most fighters establish themselves at the elite level. He never left the gym, but the gap between what he knew he was capable of and what his body would allow him to do was a source of sustained, private frustration.
“I have a chapter where I’m healthy and able to compete at my full ability, I will not let this opportunity go,” he wrote when his ONE Championship signing was confirmed.
Now 31 and healthy, the confidence he carries into Lumpinee is not manufactured for fight week. It is the product of two decades of work that finally has a stage worthy of it. His debut at ONE Fight Night 41 last March told the story as cleanly as any words could — nine days’ notice, first-round calf kick TKO of the legendary John “Hands of Stone” Lineker, and only the second time in Lineker’s nearly 20-year professional career that anyone had stopped him. Woolliss was limping into the media room afterward. So was Lineker.
“We had seven years away from striking, but there wasn’t a day that I was outside of the gym,” Woolliss said. “So they know the work that we’ve put in and that’s the result of that. That’s where the confidence comes from.”
The move down to bantamweight for the Petchtanong fight adds a layer of difficulty to what is already a significant step up in opposition. The 40-year-old Thai veteran carries 359 professional fights and three ONE wins over accomplished opposition onto the card, and his combination-heavy pressure style makes him a genuinely dangerous opponent for anyone operating at 135 pounds. Woolliss is walking into it without hesitation.
“You come in, you fight the former champion on your debut, straight onto the big show. This is what I’m doing,” he said. “I’m here to prove myself as number one.”
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