MANILA, Philippines – ONE Championship has made a last-minute booking for its maiden fight card in Thailand on May 27 as Filipino fighter Rocky Batolbatol squares off with highly-touted Singaporean prospect Christian Lee.
The additional bout for ONE Championship’s “Kingdom of Champions” event was publicly confirmed on Thursday, May 12.
A tough test awaits Batolbatol as he faces Lee, who finished his last 4 professional fights in an emphatic fashion.
After pulverizing David Meak in only 29 seconds in his December 2015 prizefighting debut, Lee followed it up by submitting Mahmoud Mohamed with a first-round Kimura lock in January of this year before thwarting Anthony Engelen two months later.
The 17-year-old Singaporean easily handled Cary Bullos this month by submitting the Filipino journeyman with a first-round d’arce choke.
Three weeks after his impressive conquest of Bullos, Lee is set to return to the ONE Championship cage to lock horns with Batolbatol, who made a name for himself in Philippine-based organizations such as Universal Reality Combat Championship (URCC), Mindanao Ultimate Mixed Martial Arts and Ground & Pound Championship.
Batolbatol (5-2) is on a two-fight losing skid and has not yet notched a single win under the ONE Championship umbrella since he joined the promotion in November 2014 when he succumbed to Martin Nguyen’s second-round rear-naked choke.
To compound the misery, he yielded to Dutch stalwart Anthony Engelen by the same submission hold this past February.
Prior to his string of disappointing losses, Batolbatol spearheaded his mixed martial arts (MMA) career with 4-straight stoppage victories, owning back-to-back submission wins over Johnjier Edu Torbiso and knocking out the likes of Elmer Tortogo and Erving Mosico.
The 31-year-old native of Bacolod City, Negros Occidental went the distance for the first time in October 2013 when he outpointed Darl Laurel via unanimous decision at URCC’s “Bacolod Brawl” affair.
Aside from the announcement of the encounter between Batolbatol and Lee, Filipino flyweight Eugene Toquero has been scratched off from ONE: Kingdom of Champions, which takes place at the 12,000-seater Impact Arena in Bangkok, Thailand.
{source} <blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Eugene Toquero has been removed from the Thailand card. Still waiting for ONE Championship's reply regarding this. <a href="https://t.co/cDSp6yfWHo">pic.twitter.com/cDSp6yfWHo</a></p>— NISSI ICASIANO (@Nissi_Icasiano) <a href="https://twitter.com/Nissi_Icasiano/status/730624980598185984">May 12, 2016</a></blockquote> <script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script> {/source}
Toquero was supposed to battle hard-hitting Thai kickboxer Anatpong Bunrad on the aforementioned fight card.
Rappler tried to reach ONE Championship for clarification regarding the cancellation of Toquero’s bout against Bunrad, but the Singapore-based MMA company has not issued a statement as of this article’s publication. – Rappler.com