Coach Mark Sangiao vows Team Lakay will be back ‘stronger, better’ after rough start in 2019

Photo by Tristan Tamayo/INQUIRER.net

MANILA, Philippines—Team Lakay’s start to 2019 is off to a rocky path after the famed stable from Baguio City lost two of the four world titles it won back in 2018.

The first champion to fall was Joshua Pacio when he lost his ONE World strawweight title via unanimous decision to Yosuke Saruta on Jan. 19 and exactly seven days later it was Geje Eustaquio losing his ONE World flyweight strap to rival Adriano Moraes.

Overall, Team Lakay’s record in ONE Championship in the first month of the year is 1-4 with flyweight contender Danny Kingad the only one to win his fight in January.

Mark Sangiao, the patriarch and head coach of Team Lakay, knew that his team will recover and that they’ve faced tougher struggles before especially during the dark days of 2017 when they went 0-4 in their last four fights.

“Of course, we’ll do our best,” said Sangiao in the post-fight press conference of ONE: Hero’s Ascent Friday at Mall of Asia Arena. “We’ll go back to the drawing board, train harder, we’ll go back to our room and try to see what’s lacking and we’ll be back stronger and better.”

Team Lakay, though, is still one of the top stables in ONE Championship with Kevin Belingon and Eduard Folayang still the reigning champions in the bantamweight and lightweight divisions, respectively.

Sangiao acknowledged that there will be struggles along the way especially with how they performed in 2018 capturing World titles in every weight division his fighters fought in.

“We’re back to the drawing board, we’ll talk about what went wrong, and bring out things that needs to be said because that’s how we work as a team,” said Sangiao.

“We always help each other and we really help one another. We’re open to whatever needs to be said because we have to discuss everything so we can improve our skills even more.”