Robin Catalan showed that he can compete with the world’s best in 2018.
After starting the year with a disappointing 5-4 record, the 30-year-old wushu artist went on a tear, finishing Kritsada Kongsrichai and Adrian Mattheis in a span of four months to lift his slate.
“I think my match against Adrian Mattheis is my favorite win in ONE Championship,” the proud Ilonggo recalled.
“It was by submission, and it was my first stoppage in ONE.”
Though he suffered a setback against Hayato Suzuki to close out his 2018 campaign, it showed the weaknesses he needs to improve for the new year.
“I still want to improve my grappling and wrestling,” admitted the Catalan Fighting Systems product.
“Those are areas that we, as a team, feel that we lack, so that would be our focus for the coming year.”
On Saturday, January 19 during ONE: Eternal Glory, the younger Catalan gets a chance to showcase what he learned from that loss, as he faces Stefer Rahardian (8-2) in the latter’s homebase of Jakarta, Indonesia.
To prepare for this bout, he did not need to look further for inspiration, as his older brother Rene was the one who handed the Indonesian his first-ever career loss back in July, 2018.
With this asset, Rene is confident that he has the right game plan to stop the powerful Rahardian.
“I think I’ll study his match against my brother to see how Rene was able to defeat him, and maybe add some of the things I have been working on as well,” he disclosed.
Moreover, he is looking to achieve something that no man has done before – knock out Rahardian.
“I just need to follow the game plan that we have,” he shared.
“I’m hoping to get a knockout this time around.”
