Baguio City – Kickboxing enthusiasts in Northern Luzon will gather at the Igorot Garden in Burnham Park, here, on February 16 and 17, 2018 for a Kickboxing Championship.
The championship hopes to advance the preparation and the selection of the country’s national team for the South East Asian (SEA) Games to be held sometime at the end of this year.
Sensei John Cay-ohen, President of the Northern Luzon Kickboxing Alliance (NLKA), announced that players from various gyms, clubs and martial arts organization in Northern Luzon will compete during the two-day tournament that will coincide with the Panagbenga Festival.
The tourney is the second of staging such event since the emergence of the NLKA as an organization late last year. The first was held last November 30, 2018.
Cay-ohen, who is also currently the Chief Instructor of Scorpion Martial Arts, explained that kickboxing will only see its debut in the SEA games, joining other combative sports like the Muay Thai, boxing, wushu, among others, when its 34th staging will be hosted by the Philippines this year. As such, the Philippines doesn’t have any existing national kickboxing team, thus, pushing the Philippine Olympic Committee to form the team through various kickboxing groups upon learning of its inclusion.
Kru Noriel Aquisio of the Max Fusion Martial Arts, Secretary General of the group, said that the rules promulgated by the World Alliance of Kickboxing Organization (WAKO) shall be adopted during the tournament. Aquisio, also the Chief Referee, said that WAKO rules set is being used in the International competition, the SEA games included.
Furthermore, while WAKO has three set of rules, the NLKA shall only compete under the kickboxing without low kick. The other set of kickboxing rules are the kickboxing with low kick and kickboxing light.
According to Sensei Edwin Aliong of the Universal Martial Arts, several martial arts group had already registered their players for the event, as of Press time. Aliong, who is also the NLKA Vice President for operation and the match maker of the tournament, said he expects more entries to be registered as the tournament dates near.
By: Joel B. Belinan
