MIMMA 5 GRAND FINALS - NATHANIEL LAKAI THE NEW FACE OF MMA LIGHTWEIGHT IN MALAYSIA

Nathaniel ‘The Sinister’ Lakai from Miri Sarawak is the new face of MIMMA lightweight. In MIMMA 5 league standings, he leads the table with 22 points. Going into the semi-finals he was supposed to fight the highly rated Jace Law (MIMMA3 Champion), but Jace pulled out and Nathaniel was left without an opponent for awhile. Until he was match up with Asuad bin Khalid, a fighter he beat in League 5. ( read more about him in my preSemi-finals coverage ).

We had a chat with him as he prepares for his grand finals appearance this Friday.

Congratulations on your semi-finals win. Please take us through your semi-finals fight...did it go as plan or you had to adjust?

“1st round I was pacing myself, figuring out if he'd change his game plan for this second match, nothing changed much. So I just set up my take-downs and controlled him on the ground. Could have finished him but I couldn't find any openings as I remembered Asuad is a hell of a fighter, he didn't tap to any of my chokes on the first match, so I was looking to submit through joint locks.”

With this win, he was schedule to face last year champion Hui Keng Fai in the grand finals. Again fate has it that his opponent was changed. This time due to Keng Fai’s contractual agreement with Ringstar which deters him from taking a fight so close to his pro boxing title match in April.

Did you celebrate the win?

“Not really, I went home poured me a huge glass of wine and played Player's Unknown Battleground. I was really tired and I’m on fight season so you'd see me in cyber cafes or at home playing games, so no big partying.”

He will be facing Syafiq Jamal. Whom was 2^nd in the league standings. Syafiq lost to Keng Fai the in semi-finals via submission and has been given another chance to redeem his loss.

The grand finals fight will be a rematch as Nathaniel met Syafiq during league 2 and have a 2^nd round submission win over him.

Although he is very much at home on the ground, while preparing to face Keng Fai, Nathaniel has been focusing on his striking under his mentor and Coach Trevor Salang in Warmonger. Nathaniel is eager to bust a few moves to add to his grappling game.

with his coach Trevor (R) and team mates Emilia

success for Nathaniel & Emilia ( Warmonger ) in grappling comp Sabah Grappling Quest last year

cornering his brother Nigel and other Warmonger team mates in Borneo King of The Cage in mid March 

looking for the win

Aside from preparation on physical sides, do you do any mental preparation?

“I listen to alot of DhyaanGuru's music to keep me calm and focused."

What about walkout song? Do u have one confirm for MIMMA final?

"J. Cole’s  FIRE SQUAD. I haven't told them yet. But hopefully they approve it with all the cussing in it."

Haha so what's your back up if it gets banned?

“ Jay-Z Hard Knock Life. Pretty hard with all these rap songs and cuss words in it, LOL”

Nathaniel has serious cravings for his mum’s cooking of pork in soy sauce…his mum is very much waiting to cook him that very dish, once he bring back the Lightweight belt home to Miri.

MIMMA 5 GRAND FINALS - MOK JUDO'S GONNA THROW A BODY SLAMMING PARTY!

The shadow of Muhd Meeraj looms large over the middleweight category in MIMMA for many years. Meeraj has dominated this category since winning it with his superior boxing and dominance, as season 3 & 4 champion.

Meeraj has now a fledging career in pro Boxing but he still participated in MIMMA 5. Only fought once in league 6 and a lightning fast victory in the semis against Nik Zainul in 18 seconds.

Muhd Meeraj (R) in action

Schedule to fight in the grand finals vs Mohd Fakhrul Izzat of Johor, but it was not meant to be as Meeraj pulled out to focus on his preparation for a trilogy (pro boxing) against Chase Haley in his quest to redeem his loss to Haley May last year.

Meeraj is a heavy favourite going into the grand finals. Now that his looming shadow is cleared. The middle weight grand finals will be focusing on the match between Fakhrul Izzat and Derek Lim.

Mok Judo accumulated 30 points in the MIMMA 5 middleweight's division. Holding a record of 4 wins. With that he qualified as league leaders into the semis vs Derek Lim. He won by unaimous decision.

By Meeraj's pulling out, this has given Derek another chance to redeem his lost to Fakhrul. But Mok will not let it be an easy night for Derek.

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Born in Kuala Lumpur, but grew up in Johor. Fakhrul comes from a big family of 7 siblings. He is the eldest. He graduated from UTM Skudai and has adopted Johor as his home state. Among the martial arts circle Fakhrul is fondly call Mok Judo, due to his beginnings in Judo.

It was when he was 12 that a movie about Judo really left a lasting impression on him and he dreamt of being a Judo athlete. In 2002 when he was 13, he was offered a place in Sekolah Sukan Tunku Ismail (formerly known as Bandar Penawar Sports School) as he was selected for the sports of Judo under a talent identification program.

His first Judo coach is Dash Battulga from Mongolia. Mok achieved a lot in Judo.
"I won 10 national Judo championship. I represented Malaysia for SEA Games 3 times; Korat, Thailand (2007), Vientiane, Laos (2009), Jakarta, Indonesia (2011).

In Thailand I won a 
bronze medal. In 2010 I again represented Malaysia, this time to the Judo World Cup in Mongolia.

Till today, I am still involve in Judo. I train the young Judokas in Projek SUKMA 2018 & 2020 (Johor)."

Sharing his knowledge with the new generations

What's in Judo that really makes you fell in love with it?
" Judo is a very niche sports in Malaysia. It requires a lot of strength, which enable me to sweat a lot. I love the great work out it gives. And the fact that you get to slam people on the mat is really satisfying. A properly executed throw is a sight to behold, and the expression on my opponent's face when I slam them truly gives me a high!"

I'm also a rugby player. Judo and the grappling arts helps me in my rugby as there's a lot of take down. I played for the Johor state team and also in the Super League in Iskandar Raiders Club." 

Mok (2nd from left) front row

The smile Mok get's went he is able to slam someone

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In 2011, he and another fellow Judoka Mohd Ezzat decided to test their Judo skills in the cage. They took part in the very first MMA championship in Malaysia, Malaysia Fighting Championship. Fakhrul won in the first round but lost in the 2nd.

His appetite for MMA began to grow and participated in MIMMA season 2. He won all his fights until the contender fight stage where he lost to current Malaysian MMA sensation Agilan Thani.

After season 2, When he got married, Fakhrul took a break from MMA between 2015 & 2016, also focusing on his job as a teacher in SMK Medini, Nusajaya Johor. In 2017 he decides to come back for the MIMMA title, after preparing himself with improve striking skills.

Never ending support from his wife Nur Amira pushes him to excel 

As among the pioneer for MMA in Malaysia, Fakhrul said that in the early days, most fighters are just one trick pony and most of them are just brawler. But it's different nowadays where fighters have much better techniques and are more all rounder.

in league 5 vs Muhd Alief 

"MIMMA has done a lot to educate Malaysian on MMA. For MIMMA 5 league format, it does gives more opportunity to increase cage time experience, but fighting almost every month does takes its toll on the body, especially when you give your all in the cage and need more time to recover."

Mok Judo is very much aware that at his weight class, he does not have the advantage of height, hence the more he focus on his Judo and grappling skills to secure a win. Training with his friends in Johor Bahru, they help each other to exchange knowledge on Muaythai, Boxing and BJJ.

Meeting Derek in the grand finals on Friday night will be a trilogy for them both. Derek lost twice to Mok, in league 1 & in the semis, both by unaimous decision. Mok will definately utilise his superior grappling to get another victory.

It's gonna be a body slamming party on grand finals night, get ready to see some Mok Judo hi-light!

MIMMA5 GRAND FINALS - AZREEL ZZAT 'MALAYSIAN SUPERBOY' QUEST FOR VICTORY

Fondly call as Tum by his friends, Azreel Izzat Al-Hadi B. Azizul is MIMMA’s 5 heavyweight league leader. He collected 23 points to be on top of his division. From there, he qualified for the semis and defeated Niker Tan (season 3 finalist) via TKO in round 2, due to Niker not able to continue from his injury. Azreel now firmly planted his feet in the grand finals which he will face Sarawakian Tsan Nieng Khai @Khaiju (season 4 finalist)

Going into the grand finals, Azreel holds a sparkling record of 10-1-0. The sole loss in 2016, in his third fight in which he was still developing as a fighter.

Victory over Niker in the semis

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Hailing from Fair Park in Perak and born to a middle class family of 3 boys. He is the 2nd son and they all three are huge wrestling fans. Even his mother!

Growing up, Tum was a very shy kid. To the extent that his parents worry that he has autism. He loves sports but his low esteem and confidence made him become spectators most of the time in his school sports day. But deep down he dream of becoming a somebody in sports.


In SMK Anderson Perak, his size enabled him to be picked to join the weight lifting team. He did well and even won a silver medal in SUPER 2009 (Sukan Perak) in the above 105 category.

But it’s his love for wrestling provided that spark for his interest for martial arts. Growing up watching the attitude wrestlers’ era with the likes of Shawn Michaels, The Rock, Stone Cold, Rikishi; Wrestlemania was an important bonding time for him and his family. Sometimes he even skip school to watch it at home. They will gather in the living room and cheer on for the wild antics of WWE.

Ask any sane kids who love wrestling will tell you crazy stories of how they emulate the moves of their wrestling idols at home. Azreel is the same.

“Me and my friends practice those move during recess. At home me and my brothers would stack up pillows and try out the extreme moves such as Swanton Bombs by Jeff Hardy. 

I once broke a hotel bed trying to copy a choke slam move hahaha...got scolded big time by my mom.”

And his all-time favorite wrestler is non other than The Rock!

The love for wrestling develop his interest for MMA by watching UFC & Bellator. Eventually it lead him to Lekir MMA. As the fee was affordable to him he began to take regular classes. As the saying goes, that was history. From a shy kid, now Azreel is living his dream of making a name of himself through sports. 

“Martial arts changed my life. I’m not shy anymore. More confident with people. But still working on my PR skills. But I made a lot of new friends through martial arts. "

While training in Lekir, he dabbled into rugby while studying In MSU (formerly known as PTLP - Shah Alam) for his culinary course. In time he began to work in the food & beverage industry. But as the food industry required him to work night shift till late night at times, this took away his time from MMA training. 

He decided to quit the work & look for a job that can give him the time to train. Azreel now work as a marketing officer in a printing firm during the day and still get to put in his training hours at night.

 

vs Niker Tan

with giants of MIMMA 5 , all semi-finalist

colliding with foreign giants in Ultimate Beatdown

But Azreel can still cook up some mean dish. 

“I’m more into barbeque. So my favourite dish is all lambs and all cheese dish. Hahaha...the reason why I’m a heavyweight, haha”

Why his friends call him Tum? It actually is a short form of the name Tumulak.

It’s a character in local movie called 'Kongsi'. Tumulak played by Shaheizy Sam as the main character in the movie. My college friends called me Tumulak coz of my Mohawk hair. It’s hard for them to remember my real name, Azreel so they decided to give me that name during my first week in college. 

But in the cage, Azreel carries the fight name of Malaysian Superboy.

“I choose that fight name for myself as I’m a fan of All Marvel and DC super heroes; and I like UFC fighter Korean Superboy so I guess Malaysia needs its own SuperBoy too. Haha”

Ask about how he feel facing Tsan Nieng Khai, in the upcoming grand finals?

I have nothing but respect for Nieng Khai. He is a great fighter. A strong brawler. I know he is good in stand-up fight. So I will use my advantage on the ground as me and my coaches are working more on the ground. My focus is of course, cardio. It’s a 5 round fight and I need a lot of stamina to face him. 

As a warm up to the finals, Azreel has prepared for battle in another promotion call Pusaka Ultimate Fight. A freestyle concept fight, wIth MMA rules minus the ground and pound and just 10 to 15 second of grappling on the ground. In the Feb fight, Azreel was crowned the champion of the Super 4 heavyweight, winning himself the Best of the Best title. 

in action during PUSAKA's fight

Champion of PUSAKA Super 4

This win does not satisfy Azreel, in-fact it serve as a motivation and gives him confidence to do well in the grand finals to add MIMMA’s heavyweight belt to his collection.

The heavyweight actions will hit like tidal waves in the MIMMA cage when Malaysian Superboy takes on Sarawak Khaiju, so get your tickets and witness the crowning of a new champion on 30 March 2018.

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MIMMA 5 GRAND FINALS - KHAIJU DOMINATION

There’s a genre in Japanese movies that features huge giant monsters. Then few years back when Pacific Rim movie was released, the word Kaiju becomes more well-known as it refer to the big giant alien monsters that terrorized earth. This March Pacific Rim 2 is out and Kaiju again will be the talk of town as it rampage through the cities in the movie.

In Malaysia we also have a Kaiju. Tsan Neing Khai aka ‘Khaiju’ from Sarawak! He is a heavyweight MMA fighter and will be terrorizing the MIMMA cage in the grand finals on 30 March.

 

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Tsan started participating in MIMMA since 2015 in season 3. Stumbling at semi-finals to Sabahan Tham Yaw Kent Following in season 4, he came back with much fire and rematch Kent in the semis but this time victorious. Following that he beat NIker Tan of Penang in the contender fight and met heavyweight favourite Darren Low in the grand finals.

It was a heavyweight fight that went down MIMMA history as the most closely contested. Giving Darren a tough night. It went the distance to 5 rounds with unanimous decision going to Darren.

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Season 5, again Tsan is back! He is determined to win the heavyweight title this time. With 3 finishes win in the league, Tsan was positioned 3rd in the league standings. He qualified for the semis and overcame Steven Yeoh of Johor in 3 hard rounds. 

MIMMA5 semi-finals vs Steven Yeoh

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Tsan’s dream was to make the heavyweight fight a Borneo showdown again by rematch with Darren Low for the grand finals. But this was not meant to be as Darren didn’t accumulate enough points to reach the semis (read about Darren Low’s story here).

For this time Tsan will need to defeat league leader Azrel Izzat of Perak to fulfill his dream of bringing the title back to Kuching. 

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Martial arts has not been part of his life until only in 2014 when he started doing Muaythai, all for the reason of losing weight as he was weighing around 140kg then. He just became a father of a new baby girl and at the same time running the business of few cyber cafes. Hardly any exercise made him pile on the pounds. 

“One Day when I was bringing my toddler for a walk, I felt tired and my lower back hurts just by caring my daughter for a few minutes. That's when I started to realised that I need to keep fit so that I can see my daughter grow up n be there for my family." 

From that experience Tsan started going for Muaythai classes introduced by a friend at a local martial art gym.
“I fall in love with Muaythai, I started going for classes every day , 6 classes a week , and I lost 30kg in the first 3 months." 

Tsan’s Muaythai gives him a solid foundation for MMA. He is among the pioneers of MMA in Sarawak. Training at Gymbox Kuching under Matt Pellino with Jace Law, Stephen Onn Jenggeing, Aaron Lo & Aaron Tan. Each of them pushing each other out of their comfort zone in order to improve each other.

His love for martial arts lead him to convert a store room in his shop to become a personal training room. That was the initial intentions anyway. 

“Started up with my friends coming in, but as times goes by friends bring along friends, then friend's friend's friends and so on until today my gym is way too small already. This was the beginnings of MAD Fight Club." 

“I trained by myself and with Aaron Tan, I went to Labuan’s Borneo Amatuer Challenge taking the ISKA trainer course level 1. I even imported a friend from Indonesia as my boxing coach, then I will be teaching Muaythai class." 

"I enjoy sharing knowledge with people. That’s what keeps me going on teaching classes. Tsan quest for knowledge also lead him to cross train with Warmonger Gym in Miri and also improving his grappling and BJJ with Albert Lim’s Studio 23." 

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Tsan is now a very busy business man. MAD Fight Club is now one of the top fight gym in Kuching. MAD.net cyber café is in its 10th year of operations, and since last year expanded his business to serve food & beverage in MAD Food Factory, all in the same block of building.

"MAD’s name is from my elder brothers company MADTechnologies, I loved their design n term so I just use their design as to help them do branding." 

"MAD means that we have crazy ideas, doing things differently, dare to challenge the new frontier." 

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On how he feels that the rematch with Darren didn’t materialized.
“Yeah that sucks big time, during the leagues my initial strategy is to skip battles with Darren as to minimize the changes for both of us to be injured so that we can had a rematch during the grand finals, but during the early league as we were chatting along, he told me that he will be very busy with work so maybe can't fight during Chinese New Year."

"I think its league 5 that I wanna get a rematch with him, but sadly accident happens, he got injured when he was training about 1 week off our scheduled fight day." 

"He messaged me personal telling me that he was injured and was unable to fight and pulled out last minute. I was unhappy at first because I bought flight tickets at RM600 and I was then very busy with my café." 

"I can only do day trips for my fight, the semi-finals fight. I had to wake up at 5am, flight at 7 am, then had to get ready to fight at 1pm. After the fight I need to get ready to pack up and rush back to the airport for the 10pm flight, I reached home that day at 1am midnight. Then have to go cafe cook the next day! Thing we do for the sport we loved LOL! , oh yeah I do the cooking myself too, I learn it from Aaron Tan… : ) "

Khaiju preparing for war

Through the love of MMA, Tsan and Darren are now close friends.
"Me and Darren, I think we are looking at this sports, somehow in a similar point of view as we both took it as a hobby. We do it so that we can eat more delicious foods, LOL. We both are the giants of Borneo, and most importantly with the love for the sports, we want to see it grow in our homeland."

the giants of Borneo

What do you think of the challenge Azreel present?
“I have been looking at his fights because I see him as potential opponent in the near future but he too choose to pullout during our matched ups, he is quite a tanky fighting styles with light feet. I think it will be a quite interesting match for us in the grand finals."

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