Lito Adiwang’s cardio looked better than ever.
Five months after his battle with COVID-19, Adiwang showed no ill effects. He put up a kicking clinic against Hexigetu en route to a one-sided unanimous decision win during ONE: Empower, Friday evening in Singapore.
Adiwang last fought back in January – a TKO win over Namiki Kawahara. He would have fought Jarred Brooks during ONE on TNT, but saw the bout scrapped due to the Filipino testing positive for COVID-19.
Despite admitting that the virus had affected his cardio, Adiwang went at the Chinese fighter during the first round with an array of kicks. A roundhouse kick opened the bout, followed by a highlight flying kick. Body kicks by Adiwang punished Hexigetu, while eating a jumping knee for good measure.
“It’s great. Very happy for the win,” said Adiwang.
Photo from ONEFC.com
Distance and height proved a huge disadvantage of Hexigetu in the latter rounds.
“Yeah, that’s one of our gameplan which is to get my striking range. If we didn’t get on the ground, just control him there,” continued Adiwang.
Not being able to solve Adiwang’s counters, Hexigeto tried to go low. However, it resulted in several low blows in the closing moments of the second stanza – and a yellow card.
A third low blow to start the final round led to another yellow card for Hexigetu and a 20-percent purse deduction.
Still, Adiwang never lost steam. He closed the bout strong to secure his 13th win in 16 bouts.
“I’m quite disappointed after the fight because I imagined a lot of scenarios that I can get a highlight KO,” rued Adiwang. “It depends on who you fight but he kept on running. Quite disappointed. I got one shot when he went for a shoot but my flying knee didn’t connect.”
The winner of the bout was no longer announced during the telecast as ONE had to cut to the live feed of Revolution’s main card.
Photo from ONEFC.com
Hexigetu, who had defeated Ovais Shah, Ramon Gonzales, and DSA prior to this bout, dropped to 9-5.
