But Pete Guerrero’s triumph on verbal submission against Conrad Iba ended the inter-island showdown with Team Saipan getting even with Team Tinian.
With Team Saipan failing to beat them even by a slim margin is victorious enough for Team Tinian considering the gap between the two islands in terms of how long and how frequent MMA has been going on in the NMI.
Since MMA became another sports of big interest among NMI aficionados, it was only a few month ago when Tinian had its own MMA team—the Zeng Zung organized by Josh Castro and Keith Nabors with help from Trench Tech’s Cuki Alvarez.
Saipan took the first triumph when Marianas Elite’s Leroy Sablan defeated independent Tinian fighter, Johmar Untalan on verbal submission in the 41st second of the second round.
In the second encounter between the two islands’ MMA teams, Team Saipan had “Marky” Mark Manaluz of Predator Combat Team for a second team win over independent Tinian fighter, Manny “The Doctor” Cepeda.
Cepeda’s swift victory over Ilo in the third inter-island match handed Team Tinian the first victory of the night.
Then, Team Tinian had George “Kamikaze” Manglona to get even with Team Saipan by sending Greg “Da One” Teregeyo into verbal submission, also in the 41s second of the second round.
Team Saipan regained the lead when Predator Combat’s Schneider “Swiper” Ongiil showered Tinian independent fighter, Thomas “The Boss” Erickson with flurry of punches and defeated him in the heavy weight fight via technical knock-out through referee stoppage in the second minute of the first round.
Pete Taitano Sakisat, also Tinian’s independent fighter had his debut win over Saipan’s Frank Demapan, also independent, via rear naked choke 51 seconds in the second round to tie it up again for Tinian, 3-3.
Zeng Zung’s Peter Cepeda TKO’ed Predator Combat’s James Justin Castro on referee stoppage in the second minute of the first round to inch Team Tinian up against Team Saipan, 4-3.
Then, Guerrero’s tap-out victory over Iba in the third minute of the first round evened the fight night, concluding Gorilla’s Warfare’s first fight event on Tinian with the two islands demonstrating the balance of power in MMA.
Meanwhile, extra actions featured Predator Combat’s Nate “The Terrible” Flores defeating Marianas Elite’s Jerome Norita via tap out in the shortly after the third minute of the first round; Moses “King Kong” Buekis beating up Jerel Olopai in the second minute of the first round and Conrad “The Mangler” Manglona defeating his co-Tinian fighter, Joe Untalan via verbal submission in the second round.
