Is Mortal Kombat 1 a continuation of the franchise, a pseudo-reboot, or a complete undoing of the events of the series, so far? If you ask Ed Boon, it's the latter.
The Mortal Kombat co-creator and CCO of NetherRealm Studio recently joined a "Kommunity Chat" after the game's official reveal where he talked more about the upcoming game, specifically, why it's named as such.
Boon explained the reason behind the name, saying: Mortal Kombat 1 is the beginning of a universe. It is not a continuation of the Mortal Kombat 11 story so the characters have completely different roles in this new timeline and we really wanted to emphasize that with our title.
This is Mortal Kombat 1, it's a brand new beginning, you're going to be seeing these characters reintroduced with new roles, new relationships, and that's the main catalyst for it. TLDR; it's definitely possible that Liu Kang becomes the corrupted god in this timeline.
This confirms that Mortal Kombat 1 isn't a remake of the original 1992 title and it doesn't necessarily make the events of Mortal Kombat 11: Aftermath canon.
Of course, it's not like NetherRealm Studios had a choice anyway. The studio had already used the Mortal Kombat name twice, so it was either Mortal Kombat 1 or it could use Mortal Kombat Origin, which is what an earlier leak proposed about the upcoming game.