WITH most competitive sports events currently on hold because of the public health situation, the little screen grabs some of the action with a reality show that weaves together a contest of wills and mental agility alongside tough physical challenges that can push competitors to the brink.
The Apprentice: ONE Championship Edition is the newest incarnation of the unscripted reality series that takes place in a boardroom and tests the limits of aspiring businessmen and women to be the Next Big Thing. Since it originally aired in 2004, hundreds of contestants have competed for a job as an apprentice to billionaire CEOs and has been aired in 120 countries
This newest version titled The Apprentice: ONE Championship Edition is touted to be the toughest The Apprentice ever. Over and above the mental, psychological and creative challenges of the business side of the competition, physical challenges that test human limits are on the agenda too.
Hosted by billionaire Chatri Sityodtong, founder, CEO and chairman of ONE Championship—Asia’s largest sports media property—this newest series has gathered 16 candidates from different parts of the world (US, Russia, Germany, Venezuela, New Zealand, Singapore, Japan, India, Thailand and the Philippines) to compete for a $250,000 job offer that lets them work directly under Sityodtong for a year as his protégé in Singapore.
Two of the contestants are Filipino: Lara Pearl Alvarez, a single mother of 25, an accountant and former MMA athlete out of the Team Lakay stable; and Louie Sangalang, 44, former URCC champion, Iron Man Philippines finisher, first Filipino North Pole Marathon finisher and a cancer survivor.
Lara saw the Apprentice as an open door to a better life for her and her 10-month-old son. After her selection from a tough audition, she scooped up her savings to travel to Singapore, entrusted her baby with her parents, left hearth and home for the first time ever, with only her courage, toughness and tenaciousness honed from years of training with Team Lakay to see her through.
It was the first time she had ever been away from her baby boy, who would cry every time she would go on video chats with him. But she hanged tough, never losing sight of the vision that if she succeeds, she would be able to give him and her family a better life.
“I’m glad I took a chance. It made me a stronger person, and a better mother. I’ve become more confident and know that being a single mother is not a setback. It’s a blessing because I was able to push myself harder. It gave me the strength to push past my limits,” Lara said.
Louie Sangalang is a tough road warrior polished by years of experience and winning personal battles that included a scary bout with cancer of the appendix when he was 23. That major setback did not faze him. It became the turning point of his life. He never looked back and went on to become a martial arts athlete and an endurance runner who competed locally and internationally. He became URCC champion from 2005 to 2007.
Louie’s approach to competing is pragmatic. “I knew that, since this is a ONE Championship show, they would be bringing in competitors that were physically capable. So that’s one of the things I prepared for. I trained for this, both physically and mentally. A lot of the other candidates weren’t as prepared and struggled early, not just with the challenges, but with all the protocols and quarantine-related measures. Because we’ve had such a unique experience in the Philippines with regards to the pandemic, I think that helped prepare me a lot,” Sangalang said.
But Lara and Louie are not the only contestants on The Apprentice:OCE that could bring pride to Filipinos. American Roman Wilson, a varsity football and former pro football player, has a unique Filipino connection too. Married to Filipina Carmina Mancenon, his classmate at Princeton, Roman lived for a while in the Philippines and loves the country, totally immersed in the culture, the food and the people. After his stint as an athlete, he was into investment banking on Wall Street, a hedge fund in Tokyo, agriculture in the Philippines, and now in corporate strategy for a F&B company in Singapore.
He thinks his experience doing fast-paced work in banking and finance and his athletic experience in football give him an edge. “I worked in a bunch of different countries, with different people. The ability on The Apprentice to be able to work and get along with people from other countries is crucial. The challenges are tough, but being able to work with people, get along, and really work as a team towards a goal is I think the toughest challenge,” Roman said.
To up the ante even more on the challenges that contestants would face, Chatri Sityodtong makes his CEO friends from Grab, Zoom, Zilingo, TUMI, Everise and Twilio, among others, into the picture. Every week a CEO friend or friends assign tasks for the contestants alongside Chatri.
To add even more intensity, legendary and champion MMA athletes also take turns on the show to test the participants’ physical endurance and prowess. Brazilian MMA artist Renzo Gracie, George St-Pierre, former ONE Welterweight World Champion Ben Askren, ONE Heavyweight World Champion Brandon Vera, ONE Women’s Atomweight World Champion Angela Lee, ONE Flyweight World Grand Prix Champion Demetrious Johnson, Indian Wrestling Champion Ritu Phogat, Karate World Champion Sage Northcutt, and ONE Women’s Strawweight World Champion Xiong Jing Nan lower the boom on the contestants as well.
The Pinoy contestants are in for a big challenge on The Apprentice indeed. Boardroom and MMA fans can cheer them on every Thursday, 8:50 p.m. on AXN cable network and on Mondays, 9 p.m. on One Sport.
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