Pinoy Active

ONE Championship, Asia’s largest sports media property with a global broadcast to over 1 billion homes across 75 countries, holds its first event in Manila for 2016 on Friday, April 15 at the Mall of Asia Arena. ONE: GLOBAL RIVALS, which will be headlined by the world championship fight between American ONE Welterweight Champion Ben Askren and Nikolay Aleksakhin, Pro FC Welterweight Grand Prix champ, starts at 7 p.m. and features ten fights, seven of which feature Filipino fighters in various weight categories. Up first is April Osenio vs. Batalie Gonzales Hills in a purely Pinay encounter, in the Atomweight category, followed by Burn Soriano versus Sunoto of Indonesia in the Bantamweight category. Team Lakay’s Danny Kingad goes up against Muhamad Haidar of Malaysia in the Flyweight Division. Former ONE Featherweight World Champion Honorio “the Rock” Banario tackles Pan Asian Champ Vaughn Donayre in the following Lightweight fight. Featherweight Champion Martin Nguyen of Vietnam disput...

One of the top Malaysian mixed martial arts prospects, 23-year old flyweight standout Gianni Subba (7-1) will return to the ONE Championship cage next Friday at ONE: GLOBAL RIVALS, against the Philippines best flyweight bet Geje “Gravity” Eustaquio (7-4) of Baguio City’s Team Lakay. With a victory, Subba feels he will be one step closer to a shot at the ONE Flyweight World Championship. “Whatever one championship has planned for me, the goal is to win a world title for Malaysia,” said Subba, who faces his toughest test yet in Eustaquio. Eustaquio is arguably the Philippines’ most talented fighter at flyweight, with a record of seven wins and only four defeats. The Filipino stalwart is known for keeping his cool and composure in the face of adversity, while dishing out some of the fastest strikes in the business nicely packed in Wushu Sanshou. For Subba, the fact that Eustaquio is also on the rise makes him feel their paths would inevitably cross one day. “I always knew th...