Ultimate Fighting Championship contender Chris Haseman at the Integrated Mixed Martial Arts gym at Stafford. Inset: Haseman with his trainer and operator of the gym, Dan Higgins (left). Photo: Michelle Smith

UFC 110 will see Chris Haseman fighting Elvis Sinosic in Australias first ever UFC event at Acer Arena in Sydney Australia. Chris has been preparing for this fight under Integrated MMA Head Coach Dan Higgins.

Featuring Integrated MMA/Fairtex  Champions Mick Mortimer, Matt Cain and Adrian Pang.

FiveOuncesofPain.com has recently been able to confirm that Kyle Noke is expected to take part in the upcoming eleventh season of The Ultimate Fighter through several sources close to the situation. Noke is an Australian born fighter that currently trains out of Greg Jackson’s MMA in Albuquerque, New Mexico. He is an EliteXC veteran and former Xtreme Fighting Championship middleweight champion with a career record of 16-4 with one draw. Kyle holds previous notable wins over the likes of George Sotiropoulos and Kyacey Uscola, with the sole draw in his career coming against the highly regarded Hector Lombard. Click on the link for more.

Everyone at Integrated MMA/Fairtex Australia would like to wish Kyle the very best for TUF 11. Go getum brother!!

Long-distance call Mixed martial arts fighter Adrian Pang talks to Yvonne Lai about Bruce Lee and growing up tough in Papua New Guinea.

Mixed martial arts (MMA) fighter Adrian “The Hunter” Pang-is reluctant to remove his sun–glasses. “I don’t want to scare anyone,” the reigning Australian lightweight champion explains. Pang recently headlined the Legend Fighting Championship,Hong Kong’s first MMA event, with Nam Yui-chul from Korea,”Nam landed some good shots early that swelled my eye up.” Pang might have managed to hide most of the bruising on his face but a large scar on his forearm – from a spear wound sustained during a “friendly”childhood skirmish – warrants further inspection. Pang, 29, is second-generation Chinese-Papua New Guinean on his father’s side and Australian on his mother’s, His Chinese great grandparents migrated to Papua New Guinea as traders. “I grew up half an hour from Kokopo town, near the former capital of Rabaul [in East New Britain province], My father owned and ran a general store selling dried goods,rice, meats,materials and petrol to the natives. We lived in our shop right on the beach and there was not any other Chinese or white community around, “The only one who really knows[about Pang's roots in China] is my grandmother. We are really close but I think she went through quite a bit of hardship during the second world war and there are things she wants to shut out We’ve tried to ask her what province we come from but she won’t say, “My first language was Tok Pisin [pidgin], which is spoken throughout Papua New Guinea; but then there are over 800 tribes, languages and dialects. Geographically, it would be like people [in Causeway Bay] speaking a different language to those in Admiralty, and constantly fighting each other. Tribes have a pay-back system where whatever ill you do, there’s always a retaliation; that’s the way it’s always been. “We were lucky in that the Tolai people in my area were gentle. But they still fought [in accordance with] old customs. My [younger] brother and I had a great childhood; we grew up the way [my father] did -not babied too much and learning to be independent very young. For playtime, my father would send us out to the bush to invent our own fun – we’d make huts or spears. When you hang with native kids, everything is about survival. “In 1994, the eruptions of volcanoes Tavurvur and Vulcano destroyed Rabaul and the provincial capital was relocated to Kokopo. It was around that time that Pang flew to Brisbane, Australia, to train in martial arts. ”I’d always been partial to kung fu because of my Chinese heritage; and I can’t remember the time in my life before [I watched]Bruce Lee films.”Pang chose to specialise in the Chow Gar Tong Long (southern praying mantis) style of kung fu and, in 1998, was brought to Hong Kong to train with sifo Yip Shui (1912-2004).”We lived at the master’s house in Kowloon and every morning, we’d get up and train on the rooftop.”Pang switched to MMA fighting in 2000. “What Bruce Lee believed is what they are teaching now – that no one school of kung fu is exactly right for anyone. He believed in adapting and choosing the best elements in each discipline to create your own style. “Married and settled in Brisbane with a 10-month-old son, Pang fights less often these days. He runs his own carpentry business and visits his father, who now lives in Port Moresby,as often as he can. “Back home, they consider me New Guinean. I’m in the newspapers all the time – they love contact sport. Because it’s a third world country and -gets a lot of bad press, they are glad [to]have someone lifting their name.”

Integrated MMA donated $200 to the Starlight Children’s Foundation of Australia today. Proud to do our bit in helping to put a smile onto the face of a seriously ill child. We encourage others from the MMA community to do likewise.

Australian MMA Team Legend FC1- by kennethlimphotography.com

INTEGRATED MMA/FAIRTEX are on the way home from Hong Kong’s Legend FC event with a mixed bag. A kneebar submission win Matty Cain, a draw for Adrian Pang in what was a bloody war, an unfortunate loss for Mick Mortimer and our friend Dylan Andrews got KO’d with illegal shots to the back of the head and walked away with a no contest.

Matt Cain showed Arthit Hanchana a few things on ground fighting. Matt pursued his dangerous muay thai based opponent with constant pressure which resulted in Matt popping his opponents knee with a brutal kneebar in rnd 1.

Photo by Terrence Yam

Mick Mortimer was next to fight and started well with  a very near head and arm choke attempt on his South Korean opponent Jo Nam Jin in the early part of the first round. However it wasnt to be as Mick failed to clear himself from the guard of the South Korean falling victim to a triangle choke.

Thanks to everyone in Hong Kong and especially promoters Mike Haskamp and Chris Pollock, your event is on the way up !!!!!!!!

Heres a pretty acurate play by play of the fights including-  Adrian Pang V NamYui Chul

Photos used with permission of Legend and cannot be reproduced or redistributed without Legend’s permission.

Click on the link to listen to Adrian Pang and Dylan Andrews RTHK radio interview in Hong Kong

From Time Out Magazine-HK

Slice of life by Hamish McKenzie- Mixed martial artiste

Our writer puts his paltry body on the line against a world champion fighter.

My face is far too close for comfort to a world champion mixed martial arts fighter’s testicles. Adrian ‘The Hunter’ Pang has my head in a leg lock, and he’s been wrestling me – it’d be wrong to say I’ve been wrestling back, so pathetic am I in his vise-like grip – for just a couple of minutes. But I’m already exhausted, I’m already bruised, and I’ve already been made to look like a flailing armless monkey in front of two colleagues, a PR girl, two trainers, another world-class fighter, and the two event organisers, all of whom are looking on with wide, satisfied grins. In hindsight, I feel a little sheepish for asking the bulky Australian ahead of the tussle: ”Are you ready for my fury?”  One could also argue, I suppose, that it was a less-than-wise idea to elbow him in the face. Pang is what we in the fighting industry call “frightening”. At about 70kg each, we’re matched for weight, but you could say he has the slight advantage of being 98 percent hard, sculpted muscle, while I’m 98 per cent pasty white beer fat. As well as being the Australasian lightweight MMA champion, he’s also the Australian champion in the lightweight division of cage fighting, and, most recently, he won the MMA lightweight world title in a fight that went for five rounds of five minutes each. “It was pretty gory, but I carne out unscathed,” he tells me nonchalantly. Pang, who is half Chinese, is here at a Central gym to promote Hong Kong’s first -ever MMA fighting championship, which features 18 fighters from Asia-Pacific and takes place at HITEC on Monday, January 11.The fight night is the initiative of two American chaps intent on bringing MMA action to Hong Kong and Macau on a permanent basis. They recently formed a company called Legend and have been seeking out top MMA talent from around the region to bring the sport to our shores. Pang is their prize draw. He grew up in Papua New Guinea, where he once caught a spear in the forearm after, he says, being caught up in the fringes of a tribal skirmish (he has a massive scar to show for it), and moved to Australia as a boy. As a young man, he trained in martial arts in Mong Kok, but he now lives in Brisbane and juggles his fight training with his own cabinetmaking business.

He says there’s a lot of strategy to MMA and holds up a Hong Kong legend as one of his heroes. “Once I saw MMA, I knew that was the ultimate,” he says, pointing out that it cribs the best parts of all martial arts to form a style with no set style. ”Being a big fan of Bruce Lee, I know that’s what he would have advocated. “Meanwhile, I’ve gained the ascendancy in the fight, momentarily rolling over top of the not-really-hapless Pang while he lies strewn on the ground. For about 0.5 of a second. “Victory!” I yell, as he swiftly flips me onto my back, tucks my elbow behind my ear, and folds my right leg in triple. All of sudden, my face is in that position again, just a tad too close to one pair of cold steel balls. Maybe I should take up cabinet making.

Legend Mixed Martial Arts Fighting Championship, HITEG, January 11, 31288288, hkticketingcom. Follow Hamish on Twitter (twitter:comlhkham)

Thanks to Peter from Tapout Australia for his support in sponsoring Adrian Pang, Matt Cain and Mick Mortimer for Hong Kong’s inaugural MMA event “Legend Fighting Championship”. Tapout and Integrated MMA will look to deliver Australias very best in MMA Apparel and MMA Fighters in the New Year. For more on Tapout in Australia.