By Michael Angelo S. Murillo, Senior Reporter
FILIPINO fighters that saw action at ONE Championship’s “Beyond the Horizon” event in Shanghai, China, on Saturday churned out a mixed bag of results.
Featherweight Edward “The Ferocious” Kelly won his fight after his opponent was disqualified while lightweight Honorio “The Rock” Banario saw his five-fight winning streak halted after being stopped in the opening round of his co-main event for Beyond the Horizon.
Mr. Kelly got back on the winning track albeit not in a fashion he was angling for.
Up against Singaporean Christian “The Warrior” Lee, the contest abruptly ended when the latter was disqualified for executing an illegal suplex onto the head of the Filipino.
Mr. Kelly was unable to continue the bout, prompting referee Olivier Coste to flash the red card at Mr. Lee, making the disqualification official and signifying the end of the match.
Team Lakay’s Kelly was still woozy when he was escorted out of the ring but later was confirmed to be doing okay and was resting.
Teammate Banario, meanwhile, had his ONE resurgence tripped by Singaporean Amir Khan, who executed a deep rear naked choke in the first round en route to the stoppage win.
Making use of his length advantage, Mr. Khan made it hard for Mr. Banario to get his game going.
He took down the Filipino a couple of times with the latter turning out to be the start of the end as Mr. Khan put Mr. Banario in a position hard to extricate himself from and eventually led the latter to tap out.
The loss was the first for Mr. Banario, a former ONE featherweight champion, in six fights in what has been a good career transformation as a lightweight fighter.
Meanwhile in the main event, ONE women’s strawweight champion “The Panda” Xiong Jing Nan of China successfully defended her title against challenger Samara Santos of Brazil by way of technical knockout in the third round.
Next stop for ONE Championship is Jakarta, Indonesia, for “Conquest of Heroes” on Sept. 22 which will be headlined by the strawweight world championship fight between champion Yoshitaka Naito of Japan and challenger Joshua Pacio of the Philippines.
