BAC 3 : ELTO & LIYANA WINS THE JY CUP

Borneo's martial arts scene was closed with some kicking action in Labuan. The Borneo Amateur Challenge 3 was successfully organised by Borneo Combat Gym Labuan (BCG) on 17 DEC 2016.

16 teams from Labuan, Kota Kinabalu, Keningau, Tamparuli, Miri, Brunei and Kuala Lumpur took part in this event which offered 11 categories for K1 amateur fights, 3 categories for MMA amateur and 2 categories for K1 semi pro fights. 

And the main event was for JY Cup for the Male Super 4 and the Female Super Fight. This Cup was offered to honour the memory of BCG's co-founder Joseph Yew. Read about this in my previous post (click here)

Borneo Combat Gym Labuan grabbed overall team champion with 4 Gold, 4 Silver, 1 Bronze and the Male Super 4 Champion JY Cup 

 

Elto Jai from Borneo Combat Gym Labuan fought through 3 exciting rounds to win his debut Super 4 semi pro K1 fight against PG Mohd Dinie from 018 MMA Gym Brunei.

Earlier on, Elto beat Morris Hii from D-30, Miri while PG Mohd Dinie won his fight against Writh Kataposan from KMMA.

Super 4 participants.

Elto or known by his fight name “Baby Pacquiao” felt a sense of fulfillment in his victory here in Labuan. Never did he imagine that his passion for martial arts since his childhood days will come down to this memorable achievement for him. 

Elto receiving the JY Cup from Ms Julia, the late Joseph Yew's wife

As a migrant worker in the F&B industry in Labuan for the pass 7 years, far away from his home in Zamboanga, Philipines  he is most thankful to his coach Alvin Chong whom has given him the opportunity to train at BCG and help him in his martial art growth.

Elto improved his K1 Kickboxing record to 4 wins.

As for silver medalist Mohd Dinie, he said participating in BAC3 really gave him valuable experience. He will go back to evaluate his weakness and promise to return stronger in 2017.

Dinie works at Royal Brunei airlines. According to Brunei's 018 Martial Arts Academy owner, Adey initially Dinie enrolled with the objective of improving his fitness only. But eventually his interest was roused when the academy regularly send their fighters to compete. He competed in his 1st Kickboxing match in BAC2.

Adey believe this lost in the Super 4 final will motivate Dinie stronger because he finds Dinie a well focused person, very humble and respectful to everyone. 

"As a coach I personally look at the personality first, rather than the talent. Dinie is a fighter who listens to me very well and accept the advice from me in order to make him improve more. He is an eager person who wants to train and seek improvements. His honest and humble personality has led me to put my trust in him, where currently he is one of my assistants in helping me to take the Kickboxing classes in the gym. Therefore, as a coach, I think the personality is the most important key in building their future whether as a fighter or not, and I do think talents comes second"

Adey, 018 Martial Arts Academy owner

In much anticipated Super Fight Female K1, Liyana from TNT Hartamas KL defeated Cindy Martin from Borneo Combat Gym Labuan.

Liyana or Li as she is fondly called by her friends is from KL and of Indian and Chinese heritage. Ask on how she felt after winning the JY Cup,

"I am really happy that I won. I was not thinking so much about winning or losing but more on performance. Cindy is tough, hard to break and came out strong in the first round so I wanted to make it as difficult as I could for her to beat me in the next round. Kien, Alyson and Tasha my cornermen really pushed me and showed so much belief in me, I have to thank them for bringing out the fighter in me!"

Sports has been a large part of her life as since 5 years old she already started playing tennis. She love competing and this is her motivation to train harder each day.

Martial arts is relatively new to her. She joined TNT Kickboxing after a friend encourage her to come along and her initial reason was just to lose weight, but her competitive nature hooked her deeper into the fighting arts and it has become her focus now.

Only at 23 this year, Liyana felt she still have a lot to learn and she is still developing her own fighting style through the guidance of her coach Alex Lim

"Winning the super fight has given me a little more confidence in myself and convinced me to continue fighting. And I hope to for as long as I can. For now my focus would be on kickboxing but I am open to try other styles eventually.

Asked on what she think of BAC
"I believe that this is the first time that BCG organized a Super fight/ Super 4 tournament and it was particularly meaningful as it was held in honor of the late Joseph Yew. I am happy to have been able to participate and honor the man that has contributed a lot to the Labuan fight scene and community as a whole.

The event went smoothly and was well organized. I hope to be back again next year!

Do u get to go around Labuan? What do you think of the place?

"It is nice to be able to wake up early run around the harbour as the sunrises. Together with my friends and fellow fighters we also visited some of the islands nearby and ate fish head soup for breakfast everyday!

This is my first time in Labuan actually. If it was not for the fight event and Alvin from BCG it might have never crossed my mind to come!

The event organised by BCG Labuan is proudly sponsored by Amnig, Dutch Lady, BoxxTomoi, Regus, Welson Aerialvideography, Perdana Cineplex, AS, Power Root, Fight Fest, One Stop Duty Free, Loong Fish Head and Mr Dicky Ng.

BAC is a platform for amateur athletes to demonstrate their talent and skills in martial arts and, as well to showcase their good sportsmanship. 2017 will be a hectic year as founder Alvin Chong has 3 events planned. BAC 4 in March 2017, BAC 5 in August 2017 and ISKA K1 National Championship in December 2017. 

Much planning has been put in place to ensure the national championship will be a success as BCG look to work closely with Labuan tourism authority to ensure participants that travel to Labuan will get the best experience and memory on what Labuan have to offer.

This will be the 1st time in history for a national level K1 Kickboxing to be organised in Malaysia. Alvin wants Borneo to lead in terms of talent pool through BAC and the other ISKA sanctions event in Sabah such as STAND & FIGHT FEST.

BAC3 also saw the continuation of the mission to produce more qualified Kickboxing and MMA referee. This time three attended the ISKA K1 & MMA Referees Course on Dec 16. It was conducted by Master Khoo Meng Yang, who is the South East Asia ISKA representative.

Borneo Amateur Challenge 2 - The Review

For the tiny island of Labuan, the oil and gas (O&G) industries and offshore banking is the catalyst for vibrant business for hotels, entertainment, retail & food business. But in recent months, Labuan is going through doldrums as oil price has been down for months and these affected the industries which reduce the amount of workers and affect the spending power of existing workers.

Fortunately there is sports tourism to contribute to the economy of Labuan. It was good to see over 70 fighters converged here on 4-5 June 2016. Fighters and their team came from all over Sabah and Brunei. This was for Borneo Amateur Challenge 2 (BAC2). Organized by Borneo Combat Gym (BCG) at their state of the art gym. (read about my previous post about BCG here).

BAC2 is not only a fight tournament featuring International Sports Karate Association (ISKA) sanctioned MMA & K1 Kickboxing, but also a referee course. The first one was in Jan 2016. For this 2nd installment, 74 fighters from 15 martial arts clubs and gym participated for the tournament and 8 sign up for the referee course. Compare to the 1st one - 54 fighters & 5 for referee course.

Team Karabaw emerged as the top winner going back with 4 gold and 1 silver. Followed by the newly formed Kinabalu Kings with a hauled of 3 gold and 3 silver. Brunei’s sole representative-ADN secured 3rd placing with 2 gold, 2 silver and 1 bronze. Host BCG took fourth placing with 2 gold, 5 silver and 4 bronze; which also makes them the team that won the most medals, 11 altogether.

Medals tally

Team Karabaw United

Kinabalu Kings

Borneo Combat Gym

Kinabalu Fighters

Tomoi Labuan

Keningau MMA

Borneon Tigers

Revolution Gym

D-30 Muaythai

The tournament was well organized and it went smooth. The facility at BCG Labuan is also top notch with a separate cage and boxing ring for both MMA & Kickboxing matches. The gym was wide enough to accommodate the crowds. It is also comfortable as natural sea breeze blew in as its located on the 5th floor of Labuan Time Square building. The height also provides an amazing view of Labuan harbor.

Alvin Chong, founder of BCG and also representative of ISKA for Borneo said that one of the objective of this tournament is to introduce more people to the ISKA referee course. He is happy that there is an increased in participants for the referee course.

As more and more tournaments are organized in this region, there’s an urgent need of more qualified referees and judges. Organizers can save cost by hiring local officials compare to bringing them in from West Malaysia.

The course offered is for level C, which covers the basic theory and learning of the rules and regulations. Participants go through a lot of practical session with lots of role play. On fight day itself, participants are put into a real fight; this is to ensure that they can perform well under pressure. All this under the watchful eye of Master Khoo Meng Yang of TNT Kickboxing ; whom is the ISKA representative for South East Asia. The experienced Master Khoo sets a very high standard for his students. During fight day he will monitor the performance of his students and will give instructions as when needed from cage / ring side. Safety of fighters is always the top priority as Master Khoo emphasize this point earnestly to his students all the time.

Qualified officials that pass the course will receive their Level C certificate and are able to be judge/referee for amateur fights. The cost of the course is RM1200. For next level which is Level B, which will enable them to be judge/referee in amateur / pro fights at national level. For international events, officials will need Level A certificate.

They are still no Level B qualified officials in this region. To qualify for Level B course, Level C officials need to clock in at least 16 hours of fights and appointed as chief judge 3 times.

Alvin aspires to see that all the gym in this region send at least one representative to go for the referee course. This will indirectly improve the standard of fight as more gym will have their own in-house qualified referee to advice their members on how to score and win.

To Alvin, this referee course offers MMA as it’s the fastest growing sports in the world today; but sometimes crowd/spectator does not understand the ground game aspect of MMA and felt it’s boring to watch fighters grapple. Stand up fight provide much actions and in Malaysia Muaythai is the more established one; however not every fighters especially those from other martial arts discipline are able to fight following full Muaythai rules. Hence K1 Kickboxing can be a great platform for all different type of traditional stand-up martial arts such as TaeKwon-Do, Karate, Kung Fu, Silat, Muaythai to fight with a common rules set that is easy to follow and which allows fast pace action.
(Read more on the difference of Kickboxing and Muaythai here)

According to him, in-fact Sabah has become a pioneer for K1 as last year Fight Fest held 2 successful K1 Kickboxing events. In April this year, STAND with 146 fighters for Kickboxing, becoming the biggest tournament yet for kickboxing event in Malaysia.

More K1 Kickboxing action coming as STAND will continue in September and November and Fight Fest 3 in October, which means a really busy time for qualified referees. D-30 Muaythai from Miri has pass the course in BAC2 and this will be good for development of Kickboxing in Sarawak.

I also managed to catch up with Mohd Bakri of Keningau MMA (KMMA) on his team's participation in BAC2

Hi Matt, can you name me KMMA's full team for BAC2
Coach : Mohamad Bin Bakri, CornerMan : Mohd. Sharil
Fighters :
1. Writh Kataposan (Gold 60kg MMA.
2. Johari Aliakbar, (Bronze 70kg MMA)
3. Ericcory Lovejoy Akisin (Silver 70kg MMA)
4. Cheung Tien Loong (Bronze 52kg K1)

This is KMMA 2nd participation in BAC, how was the outcome compare to the 1st one? 

For BAC1 we only send 1 fighter only, and for this BAC2, we send 4 fighters, 3 for MMA & 1 for K1. So far I'm very proud with their achievement and they really did their best during their fight.

Please share about what you find is positive about BAC2.
BAC2 gives an opportunity for fighters to show their skills from what they have learned during training. It also gives opportunity for the fighters to learn something new and also for them to improve and add on their fight record.

Anything you felt need to improve? 

So far so good. I'm actually very impressed with their teamwork that make the event successful.

Usually does KMMA sponsor fighters to join competition, or basically fighters pay the travelling & accommodation on their own?

It depends. Sometimes we work hard to find our own sponsors, but if there is no sponsors, we will used our own money to cover the cost of food expenses and accommodation.

Usually the trainee that goes thru the ref course on Friday will be given a practical session in the competition day, what is your opinion on this?

I do not quite agree with this, if they only become as an observers it is still acceptable, but if they become ref during competition, the quality of the ref will be disputed.

What do you think of the ref standard in BAC 1 & 2? 

I am not involved with BAC1 so I don't really have any comments, but for BAC2, I think that the ref should be given more exposure before becoming ref during real competition to avoid any problems. But overall, they have done a very good job during the BAC2.

How do you find the facilities in BCG? 

Very good, complete and I think it is the largest gym compared with the gym in Kota Kinabalu.

For BAC2, what do you think of the quality of fights?

The quality of the fight was very good, every fighters trained hard for this and did their best during the fight.

What do you think of Labuan?
Labuan is a fascinating place, although we only had time to visit in the urban areas, ( since there is not enough time). In terms of tourist attractions, I personally think that Labuan should have more relaxed oriented waterfront seaside outlets.

How do you think Coach Alvin of BCG has done right for BCG and BAC?
A very successful effort shown by Coach Alvin in promoting the art of Muaythai, Kickboxing and MMA. We can see that he is very successful when he established BCG Labuan with advanced facilities and I'm sure that it is the largest gym compared to the gym located in Kota Kinabalu. He's success can really inspired others.

KMMA is located in Keningau and always have to travel out from there for competition, how do you feel about this?
We do see this as a challenge, but if you want to be successful, you need to sacrifice time and effort and travelling cost. We try to join any event that we can.

KMMA lately is also very active in running events...is this part of the training for your fighers?

Yes, you can say that. Besides exposing things to them, this can also instill their courage, determination and spirit. Plus, it can also improve their breathing for their fights.

  

ISKA Referee Course with The Red Dragon @ Labuan

"Hoong Loong" is in Labuan. Reknown Malaysian martial artist master Khoo Meng Yang aka The Red Dragon will be conducting the ISKA K1 & MMA Referees certification course in Labuan on 22 Jan 2016. The course is hosted by Borneo Combat Gym led by Alvin Chong aka AC Poseidon.
The course will be follow up by amatuer K1 and MMA challenge on 23 - 24 Jan 2016.
Catch BCG's story here from my previous post

Master Khoo is Malaysia's ISKA Representatives and has known Alvin since 2010. He supports Alvin's objective of developing more qualified referees from this region of Borneo. ISKA stand for International Sports Karate Association is an international body body based in the United States that regulate and sanction sport karate and kickboxing matches.

With an international certification, the aim is to upgrade the standard and quality of refereeing in combat sports for this region. Once we have more qualified referees here in Borneo then matches being organise locally too will be properly monitored and judged.

We have seen many occasions where matches results was unsatisfactory due to poor refereing. The victim almost always is the fighter themselves and his team as all the months of hard training, the blood and sweat will go down the drain if they lost a match due to bad decision from the referee. Another crucial point is referee must always put safety of fighters on the top moist priority, especially in amatuer matches. All this is which Master Khoo will be emphasizing on during the course.

Master Khoo is more than qualifies to conduct the course as he himself is a veteran of 38 fight.
24 wins 13 losses 1 draw 11 K.O.( 9 pro muaythai fights, 3 amateur muaythai fights, the rest are all kickboxing, western boxing, Ultimate Warrior and Sanshou fights)

• 3 times Malaysia Taekwon-do Champion ( ITF )
• 4 times Malaysia Sanshou ( chinese kickboxing ) Champion
• 2007 Malaysia Ultimate Warrior 1st runner-up
• 2008 Malaysia Freestyle Kickboxing Champion
• 2008 World Amateur Muaythai 2nd runner-up

infor from : muaythaitigers blogspot

Fans of MIMMA will be familiar with him as he is a one of the most sought after referee in MMA matches.

Warriors of Borneo got in touch with him for a short chat:

Can you give me a personal account of your relationship with him; what do you think of him and his passion for martial arts?

We are friends and we share plenty of martial arts knowledge to each other and helping each other to grow in this industry. He is also my ISKA East Malaysia Borneo representative. He is very keen and passionate in martial arts. What's he is doing is not mainly to earn money but to help the members to grow through martial arts.

As you know he has been helping plenty of bad kids who has been suspended from school. He even went to talked to headmaster so that they can stay in school and study. As I can see he has changed some people’s life and his own life to better as well. And insert plenty of positive energy to others and himself.

Alvin Chong and Master Khoo

You are the instructor for the ISKA ref course …pleases give some inform on the course

My ISKA K1 stand up and MMA referee course will be on 22 to 24 Jan. The theory part will be on 22 Fri.

23 - 24 Jan will be their practical part during Alvin’s BCG ISKA K1 & MMA Borneo Amateur Challenge.

It will be very practical so that participants could fit in and be referee and judge for Stand-up Fight and MMA matches.

Participants will get official ISKA K1 Stand-up Fight & MMA Two referee certificates if they pass the course.

What do you think of Labuan?

Labuan is a small island but have good economy value and good potential as a travel spot for Malaysia; and here all races live in harmony.

What are your thoughts on seeing BCG progress from a shop lot gym to what it is now today?

It is very good and I’m happy to see Alvin’s BCG growing so fast to be the biggest in Labuan and have the best sea view gym In Malaysia. He deserve all these due to his passion and hard work. Plenty of people even his friends kept telling him to quit because it’s like dumping money and hard work to the sea as he will get nothing back. But I have been telling him, 

“Do what is right and do it right. Do what you love and loving it. Filter the negative but absorb the positive comments. You don't live in other people’s world. Make them live in your beautiful peace harmony & hard working gym that you created for them and make them work out happily.”