MP the King: An Atenean Who Traded Blueprints for Battle Plans

Before he ever touched a tournament stage, MP the King was simply a boy in a crisp white uniform, walking the polished halls of Ateneo de Iloilo.

It’s a school where excellence is expected, and where students are groomed to become the next top lawyers, doctors, captains of industry. To get in is already to be somebody; to thrive is to prove you could be somebody bigger. That was the world MP came from. And in that world, he had a plan.

He wanted to be a civil engineer, just like his father.

“My father is a civil engineer,” MP says, a quiet fondness softening his voice. “Mahal na mahal ko ang tatay ko at sobrang close na close ako sa tatay ko, kaya lahat ng ginagawa niya, gusto ko rin maging ganoon.”

His mother is a nurse, his older brother two years ahead of him. It was a small, tight-knit family—and in his young eyes, his father was the north star. To build things, to draw blueprints and make them real, to be as steady and precise as the man he looked up to—that was the dream.

But then the world stopped.

The classrooms closed, the halls emptied, and the boy who once stayed late in computer shops to play League of Legends found himself locked indoors during quarantine, staring at his screen, scrolling through clips of Dogie and Z4pnu on his FYP.

“Ang angas ng Mobile Legends: Bang Bang,” he thought. And just like that, the blueprint shifted.

MP played day and night until the game stopped being a pastime and became a possibility. He clawed his way through amateur teams—All Star Esports, then Ventrix, then AP Esports—until he finally broke into the MPL Philippines via Nexplay EVOS.

His family didn’t take it well. 

“Mahigpit sila sa pag-aaral ko,” he recalls. 

They told him to go back to school once the lockdown lifted. But by then, it was too late because he had already fallen in love with the game.

He didn’t go home. He pursued his shot in esports—even abroad—without telling them.

When they finally saw him win, saw him stand on a stage and lift a trophy, everything changed.

“Hindi na kasi ako dumedepende sa kanila… Nakikita nilang responsible kid na ako kaagad,” he says.

At MSC 2023, he became a player-coach for Burn x Flash, leading them to a fourth-place finish after their coach was penalized. And so, he learned drafts overnight, dissected opponents’ patterns while still scrimming as a player. It wasn’t just skill—it was structure, discipline, and foresight.

Now, his drive is no longer money. It’s building something greater—his teammates.

“Kung sino man ang nagiging kakampi ko, gusto ko silang bigyan ng magandang standing sa MPL,” he says. For MP, it’s a promise that carries even more weight now, with a roster full of rookies still chasing their first accolades.

“Mas nagkakaroon ako ng motivation na ipakilala sila sa buong mundo kung ano talaga ang kaya nila.”

There is a softness to him as he aches when teammates leave and beams when they thrive.

“Ang nagpapasaya sa akin ay may naitutulong ako sa mga kakampi ko… para may marating pa sila sa buhay,” he says.

A boy from Ateneo de Iloilo once dreamed of becoming a civil engineer like his father.

He never became an engineer. But he became something else entirely—someone his teammates could count on, someone who wins, someone who defied the odds stacked against him. And maybe that was all he ever wanted: to make his dad proud.

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