AFTER an impressive performance during ONE Championship’s Fire & Fury in Manila last week, four victorious Team Lakay fighters are up for tougher and stiffer challenges this year.
Joshua Pacio retained the strawweight world title in a grueling five round razor - thin split division against former world champion and BJJ black belt Alex Silva while Danny Kingad and Gina Iniong scored unanimous victory against Xie Wei and Asha Roka even as Lito Adiwang, just in his second ONE bout pulled off an impressive kimura submission in the first round against Pongsiri Mitsatit.
With Pacio expecting to take a break following back to back title defense in November 2019 and January this year, two Team Lakays who saw action in Friday are geared to seeing action soon in upcoming ONE event.
After his seventh win in his last eight outings, Kingad’s rumored next opponent is former flyweight world champion Kairat Akhmetov.
Kingad and Akhmetov were supposed to meet in last year’s semifinals but their bout was scrapped with the Team Lakay fighter taking Reece Mclaren instead.
Akhmetov has back-to-back wins to his credit and, although injury has kept him on the sidelines, he will continue to compete in the upper echelon of the division when he returns.
Kingad on the other hand has already defeated most of the other elite flyweights, and he would strengthen his case for a shot at the win on the upcoming Adriano Moraes-Demetrious Johnson tilt if he could hand Akhmetov his third career loss.
Strawweight wrecking ball Adiwang who demolished Mitsatit and extended his ONE slate to 2-0 will also be up for a tough contest if ONE pursues a bout against Yosuke Saruta.
Saruta dethroned Pacio last year but did not succeed in his first title defense as the Team Lakay straw-weight king managed to reclaim the belt with a fourth round finish.
Adiwang and Saruta are similarly imposing unit with the Japanese having the power to match the Baguio boy on the feet and the wrestling to take things to the canvas when necessary.
Most would be outmuscled by Adiwang, but not Saruta. This battle would be an “unstoppable force versus immovable object” type of match-up, with the division’s top contender spot potentially at stake.