ONE’s Vera wants to take Philippine MMA to the next level | ABS-CBN

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ONE’s Vera wants to take Philippine MMA to the next level

ONE’s Vera wants to take Philippine MMA to the next level

ABS-CBN News

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ONE Championship heavyweight king Brandon Vera. Photo from Brandon Vera's Facebook page

ONE heavyweight champion Brandon Vera said he wants to move to the Philippines and help strengthen mixed martial arts in the country by developing local talents.

Vera, who stopped Paul Cheng in December for the heavyweight title, reiterated his plans to set up an MMA gym in the Philippines, similar to the Alliance Gym he set up in the US back in 2007.

“I wanna move to the Philippines,” said the Filipino-American fighter in an interview with ABS-CBN’s Dyan Castillejo. “I wanna be an amazing coach. Gusto ko magturo ng MMA.”

Vera said most Filipino fighters have good striking skills. What they need, however, is a strong grappling base to be competitive against their foreign counter parts, he said.

“We don’t have transitions… We don’t have freestyle or full style wrestling. We don’t have jiu-jitsu. There’s so many more things that were missing here in the Philippines. Kelangan talaga [ng mga ‘yun]. Kung hindi, were never gonna get to the next level,” he said.

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Fortunately, he said, he has the knowledge and the right crew who will help him train local fighters.

Some of them are Filipino-Americans like him, he said.

“I have all the tools, I have all the coaches, I have all of my training partners. Lahat ng kaibigan ko, everybody said they’ll come,” said “the Truth.” “I’ll turn a bunch of US fighters into balikbayans.”

Vera said he wants to settle in the Philippines because he’s having more fun here.

“What's the hashtag say? Everything's better in the PH. (It's more fun in the PH). ‘Pag nandito ako sabi ng mga kaibigan ko, ng pamilya ko, kung paano ako dito sa Pilipinas, parang bagong tao daw ako,” he said.

Meanwhile, Vera said he’s expecting an exciting ONE Championship card between ONE welterweight champion Ben Askren and challenger Nikolay Aleksakhin at the Mall of Asia Arena on Friday.

“Man, it’s gonna be exciting. At first, I was iffy about the fight card but pagdating ko dito, and everybody started talking smack, everybody started getting in everybody’s face, I’m getting excited. Ben Askren and the Russian, they don’t like each other for real,” said Vera. -- With a report from Dyan Castillejo, ABS-CBN News

(For more sports coverage, visit the ABS-CBN Sports website.)

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