The ONE Championship cage returns to the Mall of Asia Arena in Manila on Friday, with Filipino champion [autotag]Joshua Pacio[/autotag] (18-3) set for top billing.
The two-time ONE strawweight champion will take on a former champ, Brazil’s Alex Silva (9-4), in the main event of a fight card that is packed with some of the biggest martial arts stars from the region.
The co-main event features Pacio’s teammate and former two-time lightweight champion [autotag]Eduard Folayang[/autotag] (22-8), who takes on dangerous late replacement Pieter Buist (16-4) from the Netherlands, while further main card support comes from another Filipino star, flyweight [autotag]Danny Kingad[/autotag] (13-2), who takes on China’s Xie Wei (5-2).
The trio, along with women’s atomweight contender [autotag]Gina Iniong[/autotag] (8-4), are set for action on home soil as they look to produce another big night for their gym, Team Lakay.
The team, based in Baguio City and run by head coach Mark Sangiao, identifies talented wushu prospects from the city’s University of the Cordilleras and builds their skillsets in preparation for a career in the cage. It’s a successful formula, with the team producing a host of notable champions in recent years, with Pacio (strawweight), Folayang (lightweight), Honorio Banario (featherweight), Geje Eustaquio (flyweight) and Kevin Belingon (bantamweight) all capturing championship gold in ONE Championship, while fellow teammate Stephen Loman currently holds the Brave CF bantamweight title.
With such a strong roster of athletes, Team Lakay always figures prominently whenever ONE brings a fight card to the Philippines, and the success of their fighters on the big stage has led to the collective becoming one of the most well-regarded camps in Asia.
If there was one criticism of Team Lakay’s fighters a couple of years ago, it was the fact that they lacked the grappling acumen to effectively compete on the mat, but over the last 18 months, the team has made great strides, and their top fighters now possess solid scrambling ability, with the likes of Pacio in particular showing a real talent for submissions. Indeed, his modified kimura finish of Pongsiri Mitsatit in July 2018 became known as “The Passion Lock” in his honor.
Now the man known as “The Passion” makes his return to the cage on Friday as he looks to complete the second successful defense of the strawweight title.
Pacio captured the strap with a unanimous decision win over Japan’s Yoshitaka Naito in September 2018, then lost a razor-thin split decision to Naito’s compatriot Yosuke Saruta in January 2019. The Filipino bounced back in the rematch and finished Saruta by knockout three months later to reclaim the title, then cemented his status as the premier strawweight in Asia with an arm-triangle finish of Filipino veteran Rene Catalan last November.
Now Pacio faces former champion Silva, a former Brazilian jiu-jitsu world champion who has claimed seven of his eight ONE Championship victories by submission. Four of those wins have come via armbar, and a pair of back-to-back finishes with the technique has propelled him back into title contention once again as he bids to become a two-time champion.
Former lightweight champ Folayang faces a tough road back to the top of the super-competitive ONE lightweight division, but it’s a journey he has successfully completed before. The spectacular striker, known for his spinning back kicks, defeated Japanese legend Shinya Aoki to win the title back in November 2016, then, after losing the belt the following year, reclaimed it in 2018 to become a two-time champion. A loss to an inspired Aoki at ONE’s first event in Japan saw him lose the belt again, and now “Landslide” is looking to build momentum and work his way back to the belt once more.
Ably supported by flyweight contender Kingad and women’s atomweight contender Iniong, Pacio and Folayang will receive the lion’s share of the support on fight night when they return to action in front of their fellow countrymen at the Mall of Asia Arena on Jan. 31.
The latest “ONE Championship 107: Fire & Fury” fight card includes:
MAIN CARD (B/R Live, 7:30 a.m. ET)
- Champion Joshua Pacio vs. Alex Silva – for strawweight title
- Pieter Buist vs. Eduard Folayang
- Danny Kingad vs. Xie Wei
- Kwon Won Il vs. Shoko Sato
PRELIMINARY CARD (5 a.m. ET)
- Ivanildo Delfino vs. Tatsumitsu Wada
- Lito Adiwang vs. Pongsiri Mitsatit
- Gina Iniong vs. Asha Roka
- Jenny Huang vs. Jomary Torres