In the span of just over a month, two members of Baguio City’s famed Team Lakay MMA stable will step inside the ONE Championship cage to do battle for MMA world titles.
22-year-old Joshua Pacio will challenge ONE Strawweight World Champion Yoshitaka “Nobita” Naito on 7 October in Myanmar, while Eduard “Landslide” Folayang goes up against legendary ONE Lightweight World Champion Shinya “Tobikan Judan” Aoki on 11 November in Singapore.
The man in charge of preparing the two Filipino warriors is Team Lakay head coach Mark Sangiao, and he believes that although the two are coming into their respective bouts as prohibitive underdogs, that they could end up shocking the world.
“We all know Shinya [Aoki] from his previous fights and all of his experience inside the cage, that he’s a very talented grappler, and that he’s really, really good on the ground. There’s no question that he’s among the best, if not the best in the sport at what he does,” said Sangiao who was full of praise for the Japanese MMA veteran. “But this is MMA and not just grappling. It’s everything, all disciplines combined. Which is what makes the sport beautiful.”
His ward, Folayang is 16-5-0 as a professional mixed martial artist with high-profile victories in his two most recent bouts. As it stands, however, although Folayang is a veteran of the local Asian MMA scene, he simply pales in comparison to Aoki’s 39-6-0 clip.
Out of 39 total victories for Aoki, a whopping 25 wins have come by submission, a number greater than Folayang’s entire MMA record, to put things into perspective.
Indeed in MMA anything can happen and it has, at least to Aoki. Aoki has been defeated six times total in his career, including four instances where he was knocked out. To say that Folayang has a shot at beating Aoki at his own game is a stretch, even given his improved grappling of late, but in the stand-up it’s a whole different affair.
“Eduard [Folayang] just needs to prepare well for Shinya’s grappling element,” said Sangiao. “We’ve added a lot of different training drills to get him ready for what Shinya brings to the cage.”
As for the 20-year-old Joshua Paciao, Sangiao is a little more reserved with his confidence in one of his youngest pupils. Recognizing the Japanese Naito’s solid wrestling base, Sangiao mentioned that Pacio needs to utilize all of the tools available to him if he wishes to come away with a win.
Pacio (8-0-0), faces the undefeated champion Naito (11-0-0) in only his third fight with Asia’s largest MMA promotion. Sangiao believes it will be a tough challenge for the neophyte MMA fighter.
“I studied [Yoshitaka] Naito extensively and his style is very tight. It’s fluid and he doesn’t make a lot of mental errors, which is going to be tough to overcome,” said Sangiao. “Aside from that, he’s also built like a truck. The shots he took from DSA (former champion, Dejdamrong Sor Amnuaysirichoke) were no joke and were absolutely very hard shots.”
Although the two have similar records, there is no doubt that Naito holds more experience, having competed in legendary Japanese promotion Shooto. To say that Pacio is coming into this bout as an underdog is an understatement, but Sangiao says they’ll take what they can get, and warned fans not to sleep on Pacio’s talents.
“This fight was given to Joshua regardless of his experience and we have to think positively on this opportunity. We just just need to dedicate ourselves to training and we’ll be fine,” said Sangiao. “Everyone loves a good underdog story. Joshua will write them a good one. This is MMA, anything can happen inside that cage. We just have to prepare to bring it to the champion and hopefully come away with the win.”
