Gianni Subba - A New Malaysian MMA Star is Born

Gianni Subba, Oh What A Night!

On Saturday Night MMANewsAsia got to speak to Gianni Subba after his very impressive debut win in Singapore.

On Saturday night in Singapore a young man aged just 19 walked to the cage at a near sold out arena to face a home town hero with almost 20 years martial arts experience, a man aged 36.

Think about this, that young man was representing Malaysia while his opponent was a local Singapore man who received  a massive cheer upon entering the arena everything seemingly was against him.

That young man had never, even fought a previous MMA bout, let alone in front of a crowd like this.
His only previous public appearance in a cage was in a demonstration bout at Muayfit in Kuala Lumpur.

And yet he calmly went about his business and quickly defeated the more experienced man in just 33 seconds of Round 1.

Gianni Subba was born in Hawaii, although he grew up in Malaysia, only recently returning to Hawaii for schooling.  Whilst in Hawaii he benefitted from some school wrestling but that was about it.
Since returning to Kuala Lumpur where his family live he has been training up to three times a day at Monarchy MMA  where he has worked really hard to reach the level we all witnessed.

Before this event he spent a couple of weeks intensive training at Phuket Top Team which he said definitely helped move him up another level.

When I asked him if he was nervous before the fight he said quite simply no! He did not even realise he was in a fight until he got hit the first time.

During the fight Subba landed a devastating blow which knocked Loh down and he immediately followed up with a soccer kick to Lohs head, he told me at that stage he saw Lohs eyes roll back and he knew he was out and he followed that with another big punch to the face. he told me that, that punch was all instinct he did want to do it. That's what training three times a day does, the moves become automatic, there was absolutely no hesitation from when he floored Loh, to the kick, to the follow up punch, automatic and powerful.

Obviously we should not get too carried away it's one fight, but as a debut it was awesome!

And there is even more good news for Malaysian MMA fans - he has a brother Keano who Gianni says is really good also. Could the Subba brothers soon be making a very big name for themselves and Malaysian MMA?