Philippines' Israel Ekid wins gold at King of the Table SEA qualifier
Israel Ekid took gold over Lee Hyunjun in the men’s 70kg below final, turning the Sabah weekend into a real cross-border title fight, not just a showcase.
Israel Ekid turned the men’s 70kg below final into the kind of result that gives a qualifier real weight, beating Lee Hyunjun of South Korea for gold at King of the Table SEA 2026 in Kota Kinabalu. The matchup, captured in Sabah armwrestling clips from Centre Point Sabah, put the Philippines on top in one of the card’s clearest medal moments and showed the SEA bracket producing its own champions.
The event ran June 20-21 at Centre Point Sabah in Sabah, Malaysia, under the East vs West Southeast Asia Qualifier and King of the Table SEA 2026 banner. That mattered because the weekend was built as a competitive international meeting point, not a one-off exhibition. Devon Larratt’s presence at the opening ceremony gave the card added star power, but the results kept it from becoming just a spectacle.
Ekid’s win was the cleanest proof of that. In the men’s 70kg below final, the TikTok caption identified Ekid as the gold medal winner and Lee as the silver medalist, locking in a result that carried more than local bragging rights. For a lighter class to carry that kind of attention says plenty about where the region’s depth is coming from. The old armwrestling hierarchy has long revolved around the heavyweights, but Sabah put a smaller bracket on the map with a title that crossed national lines.
The rest of the card reinforced the same point. A men’s +85kg final featured James Rohan of the Philippines against Rui Jiale of China, with Rui listed as gold and Rohan as silver. Another clip pointed to an amateur open weight finals card and tagged it as a strong Philippines showing, while a separate women’s open weight bout matched China and Malaysia. The lineup gave the weekend range: elite finals, amateur brackets and multiple countries chasing medals in the same venue.
Post-event coverage described Ekid as a Cordilleran athlete from Mountain Province and cast him as Southeast Asia’s new lightweight armwrestling king. That framing fits the result on the table in Sabah: the Philippines left with gold in a defined class, South Korea had to settle for silver, and the SEA qualifier delivered the kind of bracketed stakes that make a tournament matter beyond the highlight clip.
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