Hanging Out With Mark Mugen: The Physical Asia Star Leans Into His Softer Side

(SPOT.ph) Mark “Mugen” Striegl confesses he isn't in his best shape today—not for a camera primarily interested in capturing his famously ripped form, anyway. It's been ten months since filming wrapped for Physical: Asia, and for the guy to look the same way he did on the show in February for a sudden photoshoot such as this, or for filming brand endorsements, requires aggressive fasting over an extended period. He explains it’s not usual for fighters to stay that lean outside of competition season.

We meet Mugen at a mixed martial arts gym in Quezon City, where he trains around three times a week. Here, his rotation includes skills work, sparring, and strength conditioning alongside his teammates on the Philippine national sambo team. We document him going through his usual routine, which is likely the reason he brings up his more serious concern.
 

“Unfortunately, I’m not too mobile right now,” Mugen says offhand, as he wraps his right knee with athletic tape before warming up. It popped during a recent grappling session—an occupational hazard in sports like wrestling and sambo, where bodies are twisted, dumped, and compressed on a regular basis. Add that to his growing list of injuries, including a titanium plate in his right eye from a previous hit that never fully healed, and one wonders if he's better off resting.

But none of these seems to slow Mugen down, no stiffness or hint of pain betray his physical woes as he moves through the room. For someone known for his intensity in the sport (he has previously described himself as a “very aggressive fighter”), Mugen feels disarmingly easygoing in person. He’s all smiles and gentle in conversation, carrying himself with an ease that makes you forget, briefly, just how violent his world can get.

It was from that point forward that wrestling became more than something he did because his older brother did it first. In the years that followed, Mugen would also be exposed to other contact sports like aikido, taekwondo, and Brazilian jiu-jitsu. He discovered that his first time sparring felt natural to him in a way nothing else had.

By the time he was a teenager, he already knew where he wanted it to lead: to the Olympics, representing the Philippines.

By the time Mugen started competing professionally, he had already lived across a few continents. He went to San Diego, California for university, and it was there in 2009 that he had his first real fight. After graduating, he returned to Japan before finally moving to the Philippines.

Despite being exposed to different cultures, his being Filipino was never something he had to search for or question. He grew up with it: the food, the annual trips to his mother’s hometown in Oriental Mindoro, the Filipino community in Tokyo. He didn’t feel the need to prove anything. The decision to settle down in the Philippines was a matter of coming home.

“No identity crisis or anything crazy. I just always wanted to represent where I’m from,” Mugen says.

Also read: The Search for the Perfect Body: How the Producer of Physical: 100 Came Up With the Hit Netflix Show

Mugen jokes that “Only Time” by Enya was playing in his head the whole time he was up there; indeed, as it goes, “Who can say where the road goes? Where the day flows? Only time.” When South Korea’s Choi Seung-yeon and Australia’s Alexandra Milne began to struggle on the rings, Mugen stayed awfully cool. His composure looked like he could’ve gone much longer than his winning record of 2 hours and 43 minutes.

"They would announce it’s been two hours then I would talk to myself like, 'Oh, okay, I can go five,'" Mugen says, smiling. "Just crazy thinking, trying to set the bar so high because I knew that losing wasn't an option at that point. We had to get the win."

The scene made Mugen Physical: Asia's breakout star almost immediately. The show expanded the scale of his popularity, introducing him to people who had never watched an MMA fight before. He doesn’t mind that when people stop him on the street now, it’s because they recognize him from the Netflix series. It doesn’t replace what came before. If anything, it brought them to light—something Mugen doesn’t take for granted.

“No regrets,” he says, shaking his head. “I’m just happy that I was able to show the grit of combat sports athletes on a platform like Physical: Asia.”

The irony is that he nearly didn’t make it onto Physical: Asia at all. Mugen was a big fan of the first two seasons, and as much as he aspired to experience something like that, being cast was never something he seriously entertained—it was a Korean show, after all. So when a team claiming to be behind Physical: 100 sent him an email one day, asking to hop on a Zoom call, he was convinced it was a scam. He was sure of it... but something in him said not to ignore it.

"Then when we started the Zoom call and I saw the actual production team, I was like, 'Oh my gosh... this is real. Like, okay, it's go time. I better start preparing.'"

Also read: Physical: Asia Producer Says Manny Pacquiao Inspired the Entire Franchise

“Limitless” also shows up in the parts of him that don’t read as athlete at all unless you ask. For someone whose profession revolves around strict diets, weight cuts, and caloric control, he loves cooking and eating good food. Mugen swears he’s a chef in another life. Growing up, he spent a lot of time in the kitchen—paging through cookbooks, experimenting with whatever was around, baking his own pizza. This doesn’t line up neatly with the demands of training now, but that hasn’t stopped him from cooking when he can.

“I can cook a really mean lasagna,” he says—then repeats it, as if to confirm the accuracy of his statement. “My kids say it’s the best. Actually, my kids and different people say it’s the best.”

Aside from cooking, Mugen picked up another hobby in Tokyo that he still carries with him to this day: ceramics. In school, he was part of an arts program where he worked with clay, throwing big pots and plates on the wheel. It's the same hands trained for force but this time learning how to be careful, steady, and precise. “Like in the movie Ghost,” he says, insisting that, like cooking, he was actually really good at it. It’s something he plans to return to soon once his calendar frees up. Maybe he’ll even start selling his pottery online.

In the meantime, he’ll spend his days the same way as he did before the show. Training remains the priority, six times a week, with the intense focus it’s always required.

“I just want to keep competing,” Mugen says. “My goal has always been the same. I’m a lifelong martial artist.”

The Olympic goal he had as a teenager—the one that came before the cameras and the crowds—hasn’t gone anywhere. He’s still working on it.

All photographs by JL Javier. All videos by Jino del Mundo. Shot at the Valiant MMA and Fitness Gym in Quezon City.