Olsim plots path to more triumphs after impressive UD victory

Photo from ONE Championship

Jenelyn Olsim, one of Team Lakay’s fast-rising stars, guaranteed more victories as she continues to scale new mountains in ONE Championship.

“Expect more technical games, and expect more wins,” the 24-year-old fighter from Baguio City said during a virtual chat with reporters late Friday night, right after the airing of her taped victory against veteran Bi Nguyen in Battleground III held in Singapore.

Growing up as a striker through Muay Thai, Olsim notched her second professional victory by turning to her ground game once again.

The latest female fighter out of the fabled Benguet stable even managed to lace her American-Vietnamese foe in an intricate gogoplata, an intricate submission hold that starts with sliding a leg under the opponent’s chin but is so difficult to pull off because of the required flexibility of one’s legs and hips. She didn’t get the submission but Olsim managed to stay solid up until the final round, fending off Nguyen’s spirited tries at a comeback en route to the unanimous decision win.

“That’s the product of our hard work during this pandemic—especially last year,” said Olsim’s coach, Mark Sangiao.

“That’s what we’ve been preparing for. We’ve been improving our wrestling and grappling to quash all that talk that we’re lacking on this and that,” he added.

It was an impressive victory for Olsim, who was making a transition to the atomweight class after professionally debuting as a strawweight.

Olsim, a national athlete who won a Muay Thai silver in the Southeast Asian Games in 2019, is now oozing with confidence. However, she believes she still has a long way to go in realizing her dream of becoming a mixed martial arts champion. “I still want to polish my wrestling. As [you all noticed] in that previous fight, [Nguyen] still managed to take me down,” she said.

Sangiao believes his ward has all the makings of a champion. “She’s always willing to learn, and she’s quick to apply and execute during training,” he said.

“A bit more training. More repetition. I think she’s a complete [fighter],” added Sangiao, who helped produce four Filipino world champions in the Asian promotion. “Hopefully we could see another champion.”