Pinoy MMA bets lose at ONE FC: Battle of Lions

MANILA, Philippines – Filipino fighters Rocky Batolbatol and Cary Bullos both lost to foreign opposition on the undercard of ONE FC: Battle of Lions on Friday night, November 7 at the 12,000-seater Singapore Indoor Stadium in Singapore.

Batolbatol, a 29-year-old boxer from Bacolod City, Negros Occidental who made a name for himself in the Philippine-based Universal Reality Combat Championship, tasted the first loss of his mixed martial arts (MMA) career by yielding to Australian prospect Martin Nguyen via second-round submission.

Nguyen compelled Batolbatol to wave the white flag at the 2:10 mark of round two with a deep rear-naked choke.

Although Batolbatol had the slight edge in the striking department courtesy of his boxing background, the four-year younger Aussie relied on takedowns and burst attacks to mollify his opponent’s leverage.

Despite sporting a vulnerable broad posture inside the cage, Nguyen hammered a well-timed flying knee in the early proceedings of the first round that prompted Batolbatol to wildly throw kicks at his counterpart.

With the pressure to pounce on a more vindicating note, Batolbatol accidentally landed a kick on Nguyen’s groin and then clobbered with big blows to the head, but referee Yuji Shimada quickly intervened to pause the action and give the Pinoy stalwart a stern warning.

When the bout resumed after a brief break, Nguyen wasted no time in scoring for a single-leg takedown.

Nguyen bombed away with elbow-strikes before taking his adversary’s back for a rear-naked choke attempt, but Batolbatol managed to escape by clobbering elbows and using the cage to work his way up.

As the pace slowed down, Batolbatol uncorked a hard left hand to the body and followed up with a left kick to the midsection.

With ten seconds remaining in the period, Nguyen dragged foe to the mat with a double-leg takedown when Batolbatol was looking to nail the signature left hook once more.

Nguyen allowed Batolbatol to stand up in the dying moments that gave him the opening to deliver a huge kick to the chest to conclude the frame.

From his southpaw stance, Batolbatol unintentionally hit Nguyen with another low blow at the start of the second stanza, forcing the referee to issue a yellow card.

As the scheduled three-round featherweight tussle restarted, Batolbatol instantaneously dropped and hurt Nguyen with a straight left.

Batolbatol carelessly moved in for the kill and swung with unguarded blows, but Nguyen ran right at his foe and capitalized by scooping him down the floor.

After securing the full view of his Batolbatol’s rear, Nguyen locked the fight-ending submission hold to get the tap. 

Nguyen, who took ONE Fighting Championship’s attention when he captured the featherweight belt in Australia’s BRACE promotion, extends his undefeated streak to 4-0 with the victory over Batolbatol.

Meanwhile, Batolbatol heads to the losing territory for the first time and downgrades his win-loss slate to 5-1.

Like Batolbatol, Bullos (7-2) likewise succumbed to a similar losing manner as American standout Major Overall (6-1) submitted the 31-year-old Cebuano with a rear-naked choke in the first round.

Bullos came out with a head kick and a flurry of punches, but Overall wisely took a step back before landing a head kick of his own.

Overall tried to finish Bullos with a soccer kick, but he missed, coercing him to scramble with the Filipino on the ground and fasten the deadly strangle to win by tapout in just 29 seconds. – Rappler.com