By Adrian Stewart Co

Ilonggo mixed martial artist Robin Catalan will be looking to pull off an upset tonight against Thailand’s Pongsiri Mitsatit in the ONE Championship “ONE: Warrior of Light” event at the Impact Arena in Bangkok, Thailand.

“There’s a bit of pressure competing in front of a partisan crowd, but I need to win,” the Iloilo City native said. “Our game plan will focus on exploiting his weaknesses—my wrestling and ground game will definitely be a problem for him.”

“The first thing that was running in my head was that I needed to win for my team and for my family,” he added. “When you’re inside the cage, all that pressure really is drowned out by my competitive spirit—I’m going all out.”

Incidentally, Mitsatit had earlier defeated Catalan’s brother, Rabin.

“Avenging my brother’s loss is also one of my main motivations for wanting to win this match so badly,” Catalan said. “[Rabin] is actually helping us with formulating our game plan because he has first-hand experience against him.”

“I saw that [Mitsatit] is pretty adept at striking so that’s probably one of the things I need to watch out for,” he added. “However, I can go toe-to-toe with him with strikes.”

The two will be fighting in the strawweight division./ASC, WDJ