Joshua Pacio (© ONE Championship)

Mixed martial arts is not the only thing that keeps ONE Strawweight World Champion Joshua “The Passion” Pacio, 24, busy. Training at Team Lakay in La Trinidad, Benguet, Philippines, the Igorot MMA fighter also enjoys mountain biking and playing “Mobile Legends: Bang Bang.”

“I like it because it’s not just a game,” Pacio explained. “It can teach you about teamwork, strategy and sometimes patience. (It is) similar to MMA.”

“Mobile Legends: Bang Bang” is a multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA) game that pits a team of five players against another team of five in a head-to-head battle to ultimately capture each others’ bases. Each player picks a hero that he or she controls and to claim victory, players must work as a team.

Pacio and his Team Lakay teammates Eduard “Landslide” Folayang, 35, and Kevin “The Silencer” Belingon, 32, have taken up “Mobile Legends: Bang Bang,” often playing together as a team or with fans on their mobile phones. They have also taken to game streaming, casting their sessions through Facebook in their new streaming channel Truth x Lakay Gaming, which they created just recently with reigning ONE Heavyweight World Champion Brandon “The Truth” Vera, 43.

“I’ve been playing ‘Mobile Legends’ for two years now but I don’t consider myself a very serious gamer,” Pacio shared. “I only play this to kill time, when I’m cutting weight or waiting for hydration test results to take my mind off the hunger but when my teammates started playing it, I got even more hooked to it.”

For Folayang, “Mobile Legends: Bang Bang” can be a huge stress relief as long as he wins. He variety of heroes to choose from and understands that every player has their own role in the team just like in real life.

Folayang just started playing the game in March 2020. He said, “I like it because it’s all about teamwork and there’s a certain uniqueness to every hero you play.”