Lito Adiwang says life of hardship sped up his recovery: “I was trained on that lifelong process”

Lito Adiwang is one of the top contenders in ONE Championship’s strawweight division. His relentless and aggressive style, which always aims to finish his opponents, has made him a fan favorite in the world’s largest martial arts organization.

Adiwang was already a top-five contender in 2021 after winning seven of his first eight fights in the promotion and was primed to challenge former Team Lakay teammate Joshua Pacio, who was then the ONE strawweight MMA world champion, in a world title match.

Unfortunately, the ‘Thunder Kid’ received two straight setbacks after his win over Hexigetu in September 2021, beginning with a second-round submission loss to Jarred Brooks and a second-round TKO loss to Filipino compatriot Jeremy Miado in March 2022.

During that match with ‘The Jaguar’ he also sustained an ACL tear on his right knee that sidelined him for more than a year. Now, the 30-year-old is ready to get back inside the Circle against Adrian Mattheis this Friday, September 22, at ONE Friday Fights 34, which will commence inside the Lumpinee Boxing Stadium in Bangkok, Thailand.

Ahead of his return to action, Adiwang opened up about his road to recovery in his interview on The MMA Superfan. The now-HIIT Studio representative psyched himself up during the recovery phase, which, according to him, tremendously helped.

He said:

“That’s like one of the things where I will always tell myself “yeah, this is nothing. I can do this.” So that’s why I think my knee recovered fairly quickly and I was able to overcome it because I was trained on that lifelong process. I just really needed to balance what is the proper exercise or the proper activity to help me recover and heal.”

Along with this strong mentality, Adiwang also made sure to strictly follow the other important things in that period, as he added:

“What were the foods that I needed to eat and everything. So I had to check all of those things.”

A win for the Filipino sensation over Mattheis can catapult him back to the doorstep of the top five rankings and eventually earn him a world title shot against ONE strawweight MMA world champion Jarred Brooks.