Baguio City– Kickboxing enthusiasts in Northern Luzon will gather at the Igorot Garden-Burnham Park here on February 16 and 17 for a kickboxing championship that hopes to advance the preparation and for the selection of the Country’s National Team for the South East Asian Games (SEA Games) towards the end of this year.
Sensei John Cay-ohen, president of the Northern Luzon Kickboxing Alliance (NLKA) announced that for two days, players from various gyms, clubs and martial arts organizations in Northern Luzon will compete with each other at the Igorot garden that shall coincide with the Panagbenga Festival. The tourney is the second of such event since the emergence of the NLKA as an organization late last year. The first of which was last Nov. 30, 2018.
Cay-ohen who is currently the chief instructor of the Scorpion Martial Arts group explained that unlike other combative sports like muay thai, boxing, wushu among others, kickboxing will only have its debut in the SEA games on the 34th staging to be hosted by the Philippines this year. Thus we have no existing national kickboxing team and so the Philippine Olympic Committee through various kickboxing groupswill still have to form the team, it was learned.
Kru Noriel Aquisio, secretary general of the Max Fusion Martial Arts group, said that the rules promulgated by the World Alliance of Kickboxing Organizations (WAKO) shall be adopted to be used during the tournament. Aquisio who is also the chief referee said that WAKO rules is the one being used in international competitions, the SEA games included.
Furthermore, while WAKO has three set of rules, the NLKA shall only compete in kickboxing without low kick.
According to Sensei Edwin Aliong of Universal Martial Arts, as of press time, several martial arts groups had already registered their players for the event. Aliong who is the NLKA vice president for operations and the match maker of the tournament said that he expects more entries to be registered just few days before the tournament.** By Joel B. Belinan
