Victorio Senduk Wants To Prove Anything Is Possible
At an age when many athletes begin to plan their retirement from competition, 36-year-old Indonesian Victorio “Indra” Senduk (6-0) is still aiming to reach the peak form of his career.
The featherweight martial arts veteran believes he is only getting started. If anyone thinks his best days are in the rearview mirror, he has a simple message.
“Age is just a number,” the wushu and kickboxing expert says. “Anything is possible if you work for it.”
Senduk proved this to devastating effect in January when he returned to ONE Championship for the first time in almost six years, and met fellow countryman Yohan “The Iceman” Mulia Legowo at ONE: KINGS OF COURAGE in Jakarta.
Despite his long absence, and the task of defeating a man with 14 mixed martial arts contests under his belt, “Indra” notched an exciting TKO victory, less than a minute into the second round.
“I was really nervous. I just wanted to do well because it has been so long since I had been in a professional fight,” Senduk admits.
“I honestly did not care if I won or lost. I was just so happy that I could continue competing in ONE Championship.”
Senduk’s nerves were at odds with his great experience in martial arts. After all, his love for training and competing began more than two decades ago.
As a teenager who began his combat sports journey as a student of boxing, he traveled from Manado, North Sulawesi, to the capital city of Jakarta to attend the Southeast Asian Games in 1997.
There, Senduk recalls immediately being drawn to events like karate and pencak silat, Indonesia’s native martial art.
From then on, he was interested in exploring other styles beyond ‘the sweet science.’
“I was involved in boxing to start with,” he says. “But then, after I saw the fights at the SEA Games, I wanted to learn more. After that, I got into pencak silat, karate, kickboxing, and Muay Thai.”
The bright lights of Jakarta appealed to him, too. Senduk convinced his parents to let him bunk with family in the city until he finished high school. Later, he moved to Bandung, West Java to focus on wushu.
“Jakarta was amazing,” he recalls. “There were lots of people. It was really exciting.”
“Indra,” as he became known, experienced quite a bit of success in his endeavors. He went from fan to competitor in the SEA Games, earning a wushu bronze medal in 2007 and a silver medal in 2011.
In February 2012, he blended all of his striking skills together with grappling in anticipation of his mixed martial arts debut at ONE: BATTLE OF HEROES – the promotion’s second-ever show, and its first in Jakarta. He knocked out Raymond Tiew, and then continued his career regionally, where he became the IBC Featherweight Champion.
Despite his success, he only competed in the sport sporadically because of his wushu commitments, as well as a knee injury that kept him on the sidelines.
Fortunately, Senduk is all healed up now, and he is focused on making a run at the ONE Featherweight World Championship. The Indonesian knows his age means he has less time to accomplish his goal than the younger lions in the organization, but he plans to make up for it by utilizing his vast wealth of knowledge.
He is also concentrating heavily on his cardiovascular regime to ensure he can physically match anyone else in the division.
“The focus has to be on endurance and cardio,” Senduk explains. “I do long distance running, at least 12 kilometers to 16 kilometers a few times a week. I mix that with 100-meter sprints.”
Between that, and his training at the Gorilla Fight Club, “Indra” will be fully prepared for the next step of his martial arts journey. The Indonesian will put his spotless record on the line against Cambodian Kun Khmer striker Sor Sey at ONE: GRIT & GLORY.
While Senduk is looking to continue moving forward with his world title ambitions, he is also hoping to inspire his fellow countrymen at the Jakarta Convention Center, in addition to billions of other people around the globe.
“I want to prove that age is no obstacle,” he says. “It is only a number.”
