Champions Jordan \u201cThe Machine\u201d Manglona, Roman \u201cSonic Boom\u201d Alvarez, and Rob \u201cThe Deal\u201d Wusstig will be making their respective title defense in next month\u2019s Rites of Passage 22: Rampage.<\/p>\n
This will be Manglona and Alvarez\u2019s first time to defend their belts, while Wusstig will be making his second title defense after beating Stanley Iakopo by rear-naked choke submission in Trench Warz 20: Full Throttle in December last year.<\/p>\n
Trench Tech\u2019s Manglona (4-1) will try to keep the flyweight title on home soil when he goes up against challenger Mcklane \u201cThe Game\u201d Alfred (3-3, 1 knockout), who is fighting out of VIDA MMA Guam.<\/p>\n
Manglona had a number of exhibition matches, mostly in kickboxing. This will be his first MMA fight since beating Guam Muay Thai\/Underworld Extreme\u2019s Scott \u201cDa Slaya\u201d Eclavea (3-3) by split decision in last year\u2019s Pacific Xtreme Combat 52 in Guam.<\/p>\n
Alvarez, meanwhile, will be climbing the octagon for the first time since losing to New Zealand\u2019s Mark Abelardo of Team Quest Thailand in PXC 50 by technical knockout in December 2015.<\/p>\n
Alvarez\u2019s loss to Abelardo was his first in a PXC-organized event and in the process ending his five-match winning run. The Auckland-native (13-5) won eight matches by KO and his latest loss against Stephen Loman by unanimous decision in PXC 55.<\/p>\n
Alvarez was sidelined for almost a year due to various injuries while training for two fights. He first injured his hand forcing him out of a scheduled PXC match and it took six months for it to heal.<\/p>\n
He was again training after getting an invitation to fight in Deep Impact in Japan last year when he suffered a groin injury and pulled his hamstring.<\/p>\n
Alvarez is now back to his usual form and will be using his match against Cruz as a gauge if he is now ready to show his skills in Deep Impact Japan later this year.<\/p>\n
Wusstig, fighting out Team Tuck, will have his hands full when he clashes with undefeated challenger Mon Ju Lee for the main event.<\/p>\n
Little is known about Lee, who made the jump from 145 lbs to 155 lbs just to fight Wusstig for the lightweight belt.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Champions Jordan \u201cThe Machine\u201d Manglona, Roman \u201cSonic Boom\u201d Alvarez, and Rob \u201cThe Deal\u201d Wusstig will…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":48,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[3645,1289,1125,13735],"class_list":["post-257557","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sports","tag-deep-impact-japan","tag-pxc","tag-rop","tag-stanley-iakopo"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/257557","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/48"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=257557"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/257557\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=257557"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=257557"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=257557"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}