Osenio admits defeat, vows to learn

MANILA, Philippines — April Osenio knows she simply wasn’t up to the task.

Falling in the hands of Xiong Jing Nan on Saturday, the Team Lakay ward had no answer to the heftier and much more experienced striker in her Chinese foe during the undercard of ONE Championship’s “Warriors of the World” in Bangkok, Thailand.

“It’s not my night,” Osenio told the press in Filipino. “But I’m still young. I need to improve my game and return to the gym to make that happen.”

Despite being the underdog and coming from a long break, the Baguio City native was able to keep up with Jing Nan. She tried to equal her foe’s boxing pedigree with her strikes.

Osenio, who tried to bring the fight standing up, got caught with a guillotine late in the opening period. She was able to free herself but was immediately peppered with a barrage of punches by her assignment.

Including the devastating right that made her drop at the 3:44 mark of the fight clock.

“I really lost. [The outcome] wasn’t pretty. I’ll just have to bounce back next time,” the soft-spoken Filipina said. 

Asked if she was tricked into engaging he opponent in a striking match — wherein she was clearly outclassed — Osenio said it wasn’t the case. But she also pointed that the punches efficiently hit their target, hence the result.

This was also echoed by the coach of the famed fight stable, Mark Sangiao, whose Team Lakay relies heavily on striking — a foundation of the martial art Wushu.

“We reviewed,” he noted. The game plan was to actually just trade with her foe a bit and then eventually take her down. Early on, Jing Nan proved she was tough. She captured (April) with a guillotine.”

“(April) was also trying take her down but she was simply tough. She was also heavy. Those are probably among the many factors we were unable to execute,” Sangiao added.

“And she got rattled,” the mentor said of her ward.

The recent college graduate, who took a break from the sport to finish her BS Criminology degree, noted that it’s high time that she tweak her movements within the cage.

To which her coach also echoed.

“Back to training and studying our inadequacies,” he closed.