Team Lakay’s Mark Sangiao: We Want All The Belts Back

After an unbelievable 2018 for Team Lakay, which saw them end the year with four ONE Championship world champions, the Baguio-based gym struggled to emulate their success in 2019. Although Joshua Pacio would lose and then win back his ONE strawweight title, Eduard Folayang, Kevin Belingon and Geje Eustaquio all would all lose their belts.

However, not deterred by a tough 2019, Team Lakay’s head coach Mark Sangiao is confident that his team will return to glory in the not too distant future.

“The plan moving forward is to keep on winning, work on their weaknesses, and become more rounded so there’s no weakness in them – whether it be on ground or wrestling. We want them to be complete because we want all the belts back that we lost,” Sangiao told ONE Championship.

However, Sangiao’s goal isn’t only to retrieve the lost belts, the Team Lakay main man has his sights on more titles. Having reached the final of the ONE Flyweight World Grand Prix and being so competitive against one of the best pound-for-pound mixed martial artists in the world, Demetrious Johnson at ONE: Century, Mark would love to see Danny Kingad bring the ONE flyweight world title back home to the mountains of Baguio City.

“[Above all], we want Danny to win it, and as much as possible, I am also hoping for Kevin’s [Belingon] resurgence and maybe Eduard [Folayang] can get his belt back as well.”

Whilst winning world titles is obviously one of Team Lakay’s major goals, Mark Sangiao also finds endless motivation from his quest to never stop learning and improving.

“We should never stop learning and searching for the next steps moving forward. Whatever we get, if we achieve one thing, we don’t stop there. We have to keep moving forward and think of what our athletes need.

“At the end of the day, they’re the ones who are standing in the cage and we need to give them everything they need, both physically and mentally. They have to be 100 percent ready when it comes to the cage and that’s the reason why we have to work as a team.”



See also:


Tagged: , , , , , , ,

Leave comment

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.