Vera keeps ONE world title; Folayang gets back on top

Filipino-American Brandon Vera points to the crowd after beating Italian Mauro Cerilli in just a minute and five seconds. ONE CHAMPIONSHIP

MANILA – Brandon Vera retained his world championship while Eduard Folayang reclaimed what he lost a year ago in ONE Championship at the SM Mall of Asia Arena in Pasay City.

Vera hardly showed any rust after two years of inactivity in the MMA, finishing off Italian challenger Mauro Cerilli in a little over a minute to keep his ONE world heavyweight title Friday night.

The 41-year-old Filipino-American tested the waters early in the opening round before taking advantage of Cerilli’s miscue on defense to knockdown the Italian with a counter left hook in just one minute and five seconds into the match.

Ang tagal na dalawang taon pero mukhang kayang-kaya pa,” Vera said in a post-match interview. “When Mauro hit me, it was pretty hard, so I was glad to have knocked him out.”

With his second successful title defense, Vera improved his record to 16-7-0 (win-loss-draw), while the 35-year-old Cerilli saw his slate drop 12-3-0.

Folayang, for his part, was back on top after capturing the ONE world lightweight title after a hard-earned unanimous-decision victory over Amir Khan of Singapore.

The 35-year-old Filipino, who lost the belt to Martin Nguyen last year, put on a masterful performance with his strikes that prevented Khan from launching his attack and pull off a massive upset.

The victory made Folayang the fourth Filipino world title holder from Team Lakay along with Kevin Belingon (bantamweight), Geje Eustaquio (flyweight) and Joshua Pacio (strawweight).

In other results, Jeremy Miado scored a second-round, technical-knockout victory over Peng Xue Wen of China while Honorio Banario had a unanimous-decision win against Rahul Raju of India./PN

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