‘This Is Gonna Fire Me Up’ – Tye Ruotolo Reflects On Challenging Title Defense Against Pawel Jaworski At ONE Fight Night 41
· Yahoo Sports
Tye Ruotolo left Bangkok with his ONE Welterweight Submission Grappling World Title intact after a hard-fought third defense at ONE Fight Night 41: Sinsamut vs. Jarvis on Prime Video this past Friday, March 13, inside Bangkok’s legendary Lumpinee Stadium.
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The 23-year-old American superstar made sure everyone knew his intent from the opening bell. Before a single leg lock was hunted or a guard was tested, the Roots of Jiu Jitsu representative launched off the ropes and drove through Pawel Jaworski with a thunderous pro wrestling-style spear.
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The move was months in the making. He had actually tested the play at the very same venue using his twin brother, ONE Lightweight Submission Grappling World Champion Kade Ruotolo, as a human crash-test dummy before the opportunity ever arrived in competition.
When the moment came, he didn’t hesitate one bit.
Ruotolo told onefc.com:
“I just sent it on the ropes, and that’s a hard move to defend. My opponent did not even try to defend. He looked like a deer in the headlights. It worked out pretty well.
“I was stoked. It felt good. At one point, it felt like I was pretty horizontal in the air. So I felt like there was definitely some good momentum, some good inertia. It felt fun for sure.”
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The theatrics were just the beginning, though. Once the action settled into the grappling exchanges the Californian had spent his camp preparing for, the real test began.
The opponent — Jaworski, an IBJJF No-Gi World Champion — wasted no time establishing his signature threat in his promotional debut. The Polish standout’s leg-locking game, flexibility, and inversions presented a puzzle that the defending champion found more difficult to handle than expected.
He shared:
“I knew it was going to be a challenge, for sure, especially in 10 minutes. It’s gonna be hard to break these guys and get past their guards.
“It can be super difficult, but that’s my job, it’s to learn how to get past it, you know? And it would have been nice to get past [Jaworski’s leg locks from guard] more than I did today.”
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Jaworski may have been a tough nut to crack, even scoring a catch with less than two minutes on the clock. However, the defending king wasted no time responding, locking up a deep mounted choke to secure his second catch with 30 seconds left on the clock.
Then, Ruotolo took the Polish challenger into deep waters with a triangle choke as time ticked. When the scores were tallied, all three judges agreed: the American had done enough to retain his gold. His record in submission grappling moved to 37-12, and the belt remained draped over his shoulders.
When asked to measure the result against his previous two defenses, Ruotolo, who built a perfect 2-0 start in MMA in the second half of 2025 by tapping Adrian “The Phenom” Lee and Shozo “The Great Teacher” Isojima, didn’t reach for easy satisfaction:
“It always feels good to come home with the belt, for sure. I felt a little rusty in there, to say the least. I’m normally three [or] four steps ahead of my opponents.
“This time, I just felt a little slower than normal. A little rusty, and I think it’s just a lack of training in jiu-jitsu and too much focus on MMA.”
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Back To The Lab — And Back On The Chase
Tye Ruotolo’s World Title reign has been defined by a simple principle: control everything, threaten everywhere, and never let the opponent breathe.
It is a standard the ONE Welterweight Submission Grappling World Champion upheld across his promotional campaign, and one he holds himself to every time he steps onto the global stage.
By his own measure, he fell short of it on Friday:
“It’s not towards the top, I’d say it’s a little bit on the lower side. But yeah, it’s all good. It’s part of the process. It’s hard for every time you step out there for it to be perfect.
“And I know that this is gonna fire me up for the next time. I’m gonna get back to the lab with my brother, work on all this stuff that we’ve been lagging on.”
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And clearly, it already has Ruotolo fired up.
In his post-match call-out, Ruotolo set his sights on the Lee family — not just a rematch against Adrian Lee, but a shot at reigning two-division ONE MMA World Champion Christian “The Warrior” Lee — for a dream family-versus-family collision on the global stage.
The 23-year-old added:
“I didn’t think about special rules. I don’t know if they’d maybe be open to that. I don’t think they’d be open to that, but I was meaning it for MMA — [us against] the Lees. I think Adrian called me out after his last fight, which I saw somewhere.
“So I just thought, man, instead of fighting Adrian again, it’d be sick if we had the Ruotolos versus the Lees on one card. That would be super interesting.”
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