MANILA, Philippines - All five of the Team Lakay fighters got buried under the avalanche of the strong, vicious foreign juggernaut, disappointing predominantly local fight fans that packed the MOA Arena for the ONE Fighting Championship: Rise to Power Friday night.
Honorio Banario’s stunning defeat at the hands of Japanese Koji Oishi capped what turned out to be a bad, forgettable night for Phl mixed martial arts.
Banario not only completed a Filipino shutout. Worse, he relinquished the featherweight crown on his first ever title defense and, worst, the 23-year-old Banario lost a fight he was winning.
Banario, flashing the lethal striking form he and all Team Lakay bets are known for, battered Oishi with a flurry of combinations late in the opening round and nearly succeeded in knocking the senses out of his foe but the Japanese hung tough enough to be saved by the bell.
Then like a silent assassin stalking his prey, the seasoned Oishi unleashed a powerful right that Banario didn’t see coming, shutting the lights out of the latter and stunning the crowd that was hoping for a much-needed win after four of the latter’s stablemates fell like dominoes.
The end came with 1.45 minutes passing by the second round. Banario lay on his back for a few minutes, shocked and dazed by his surprising, sudden fall from grace.
“He was lucky,†said Banario in Filipino, referring to Oishi, who couldn’t even attend the customary post-fight interview after he was quickly rushed straight to the nearby hospital for breaking a hand.
Banario said the referee should have stopped the fight late in the first round.
“Deep in my heart, I know I should have won the fight, he wasn’t moving anymore, I thought the referee would stop it but he just didn’t,†he said.
Banario, who fell to 8-2, rose to fame when he shocked countryman Eric Kelly in the ONE FC: Return of Warriors in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia last Feb. 2 to become the first Filipino title-holder in the most popular, prestigious fight organization in the East today.
It didn’t last long though.
Both Kevin Belingon and Eduard Folayang likewise fell by the wayside with stinging defeats at the hands of Japanese Masakatsu Ueda and former Ultimate Fighting Championship fighter Kamal Shalorus of Iran via unanimous decisions.
Of the two, Belingon had best winning chances he came back from the losing end of Ueda’s ground-and-pound attack in the first two rounds to come close to knocking out the latter in the third and final round.
Ueda, who hiked his slate to 18-2-2, eventually won the bout but he went out of the cage with his face bloodied all over, the result of the punishment dealt by Belingon, who absorbed his third setback against 11 wins.
Folayang, a local hero who has won wushu gold medals in the Asian and Southeast Asian Games, found Shalorus, who fought both in the UFC and the now defunct WEC, too hot to handle and just didn’t have an answer to the Iranian’s relentless takedown attempts.
Rey Docyogen also blew what could have been a win as his back-pedalling for most of the final two rounds may have convinced the judges to give Japan’s Yasuhiro Urushitani a close split decision in their flyweight bout.
Geje Eustaquio simply didn’t possess the needed takedown defense to overcome a well-rounded Andrew Leone.
The former UFC stars failed to make a big impression as Tim “The Maine-iac†Sylvia and Phil Baroni both absorbed stunning losses to fellow American Troy Johnson and Nobutatsu Suzuki of Japan.
In the co-main event of the evening, Brazilian Fernandes proved too skilled, conditioned for Japanese challenger Ketsu Okazaki to pull off a unanimous decision win that sealed him the interim bantamweight title.
Lowen Tynanes posted the fastest fight of the night as he overwhelmed Felipe Enomoto right in the first round.