John Lineker hasn’t fought in MMA in over a year when he took on Shinya Aoki as a last-minute openweight replacement in Japan. “Hands of Stone” returns to the country for his kickboxing debut at ONE 172 on Sunday, looking to keep his pockets fill while waiting for his next assignment in MMA.
Lineker will battle former ONE kickboxing champion Hiroki Akimoto in Saitama after going 2-1 in muay Thai matches over the last six months. A father of six, the Brazilian says he won’t waste time on the sidelines.
“I definitely have to work more to provide for the family,” Lineker told MMA Fighting. “I’m going there with this plan, to get the knockout. I’m aggressive every time I fight, always looking to not let it go to the judges, and it won’t be different this time. I’ll go for the knockout and try to win that [$50,000] bonus.”
Lineker wasn’t planning on doing all this, as he focused on regaining his ONE title in a trilogy bout with Fabricio Andrade, but opted to get paid while waiting for the fellow Brazilian talent.
“It’s about staying active and getting paid,” Lineker said. “It’s better than staying sidelined because if not for these fights I would have stayed basically a year without fighting. I believe [ONE] is waiting for the title fight. Fabricio hadn’t defended yet, I don’t know the reason why he was holding the belt, but he just fought and won fast against the Korea [Won Il Kwon]. I took the opportunity with these fights to make some money and stay active.”
The former ONE bantamweight champion turns 35 in June and is planning for his post-MMA life, and has recently started a construction company in his hometown of Paranagua. Lineker and his business partner just finished renovating a building, and he likes the new challenge.
“It’s something new to me, something I didn’t know much before,” Lineker said. “[My business partner] has the knowledge, and it’s being cool to enter this other area. We have a pretty hard career [in fighting] and we don’t know how long the body will be able to perform at the highest level [laughs], so we have to be prepared for the future.”
The 49-fight MMA veteran enters his kickboxing debut unsure what to expect from Akimoto, who went 6-4 in kickboxing matches at ONE. The Japanese talent rode a five-fight winning streak at one point of his career, leading to a title victory over Capitan Petchyindee.
“I’ll be honest, I didn’t follow much the muay Thai and kickboxing guys as I focused more on MMA,” Lineker said, “but I started watching his fights after they booked our fight and I saw he’s very dangerous, very tough. I know too little about him, but I saw he’s very experienced in kickboxing.”
“The preparation doesn’t chance much for us because we’re always training everything for MMA,” he added. “We do more specific training now, of course, so I let grappling aside a bit, but it doesn’t chance much in the stand-up part.”
“Hands of Stone” scored back-to-back knockouts in muay Thai bouts in 2024, flooring Asa Ten Pow and Alexey Balyko with hooks, before losing a decision to Kulabdam Sor.Jor.Piek Uthai earlier this month. He expects his knockout power to translate well with 8-ounce kickboxing gloves.
“We use bigger gloves in training and it’s a little bit harder to score knockouts,” Lineker said. “But it’s an eight-ounce glove there, and it’s a very dangerous one. It’s smaller, so I believe that if the hand lands, he will go down the same way he would if it were MMA gloves.”
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