MANILA, 16 January 2004 — Former world champion Joma Gamboa failed to reclaim glory after losing to World Boxing Council (WBC) lightflyweight champion Jorge Arce in their scheduled 12-rounder at the Banamex Hippodromo in Mexico City.
Arce sent Gamboa kissing the canvas in the second round in a defeat that prevented the Filipino fighter from joining International Boxing Federation (IBF) titlist Manny Pacquiao as the only other Filipino world boxing king. Gamboa’s career, which reached its peak in 2000 when he briefly held the World Boxing Association (WBA) minimumweight title.
Arce instead increased Mexico’s tally in its head-to-head clashes with the Philippines in world title matches to 22-10. The Negros-born, Cebu-bred Gamboa was an overwhelming underdog in their bout against a hometown crowd backing Arce.
American referee Jay Nady stopped the fight to prevent Arce from giving Gamboa more punishment. Gamboa received $10,000 in his fifth failed title bid.
Buhain Urges Athletes to Work Harder
Philippine Sports Commission (PSC) chairman Eric Buhain has urged the country’s athletes to train harder and aspire for bigger goals in two big international events coming up, the Athens Olympics in August and the 2005 Southeast Asian Games in Manila. Buhain said the PSC will prepare a bigger program for Filipino athletes in the wake of the country’s 48 gold medal finish in the Vietnam SEA Games last December. The program, he said, will prepare the athletes for the Athens Games and the SEA Games the country will host for the third time next year. Buhain said the program the PSC laid down in preparation for the Vietnam SEA Games will be sustained, noting that out of 89 athletes who received support from the First Gentleman Foundation, 48 won gold medals.
Salud Pulls Out of Talks in Pacquiao-Barrera Rematch
World Boxing Council (WBC) founding secretary-general Rudy Salud has pulled out of the organizing group working for a Manny Pacquiao-Marco Antonio Barrera rematch, citing recent allegations by trainer Freddie Roach of financial fraud committed by some members of Team Pacquiao.
Salud, a lawyer-sportsman involved in discovering hidden Filipino boxing talents, was earlier approached by the group of American multi-millionnaire Louis Pearlman, Roach and lawyer Nicholas Khan to head the group that will organize the Pacquiao-Barrera rematch, proposed to be held in the Philippines sometime late April.
“In view of suspicions surrounding the recent fights of Manny Pacquiao, we have deemed it prudent to disengage from ongoing negotiations to stage Pacquiao’s next fight in Manila, which was anchored on our desire to help our country overcome its negative international image and also to give Pacquiao’s countrymen a chance to see their hero in action,” said Salud in an interview. Salud had already met with a representative of Pearlman, owner of Trans Continental and such popular groups as The Backstreet Boys and N’Sync. Salud stipulated a number of stiff conditions including a late April date for a Barrera rematch, a perfected contract by the end of January including a telecast deal with HBO, an $800,000 purse for Pacquiao and an $80,000 deposit which would be forfeited to the Pacquiao camp should the Pearlman group fail to finalize all details by Jan. 31.
The group agreed with the terms and asked Salud on New Year’s day to whose account the deposit be sent. However, Salud begged off in view of the nagging controversy over the Nov. 15 “Clash of the Titans” in which Pacquiao annihilated Barrera in the 11th round. Pacquiao was supposed to get $700,000 for the fight but his US agent, Murad Muhammad, gave him only $350,000 from which taxes and other expenses including the 10-percent training fee of Roach had to be deducted.
Search for New RP Five Talents Bared
Basketball talents in the countryside need not go to Metro Manila anymore to be discovered. National coaches Boyzie Zamar and Dong Vergeire will go to them instead starting next month.
In a nationwide search encompassing 22 key cities in Luzon, Visayas and Mindanao and dubbed “Tryouts ng Bayan,” Zamar and Vergeire will look for RP Team-caliber talents in the search to be jointly undertaken by Cebuana Lhuillier and the Basketball Association of the Philippines (BAP).
Zamar said the talent search is necessary because the Philippine team, which kept its Southeast Asian Games cage crown in Vietnam, has been depleted. As of last count, seven mainstays of the squad are all set to join the pro draft, with three more likely to be enlisted by pro teams.
National players in the draft pool are Ranidel de Ocampo, Jean Marc Pingris, Irvin Sotto, Rich Alvarez, Wesley Gonzales, James Yap and Gary David.
PBA teams are also interested in tapping free agents Ricky Calimag, Allan Salangsang and Celino Cruz, leaving Dennis Madrid and Richie Melencio as the only holdovers among the RP players mentored by Aric del Rosario. The agreement was sealed recently in a meeting among BAP Secretary General Graham Lim and executive Vice President Christian Tan and Danny Francisco, special projects director and assistant to Jean Henri Lhuillier, executive vice president and general manager of Cebuana Lhuillier.
Zamar said the talent search, which will last from 1 1/2 to 2 months, is a two-pronged program aimed at recruiting prospective national players and at holding outreach clinics. Mindanao will be the initial stop, with the cities of Davao, Cagayan de Oro and General Santos as the likely venues.
Football to Be Scrapped in 2005 SEA Games?
Football, table tennis, volleyball and badminton are likely to be left out when the Philippines eventually submits in March the sports disciplines it would include in the 2005 Southeast Asian Games.
During the initial meeting of the 2005 SEAG technical committee, several considerations were drafted to determine the 20 “priority sports” for the biennial meet. And popular as these disciplines are in other countries, the Philippines has been left way behind in these sports among the 11 member-nations of the SEA Games Federation and would therefore be of no help in the Philippines’ quest for the overall championship. The foremost consideration is the country’s chances of winning which the committee members would base on the SEAG records dating back to 1991 when the country last hosted the games.
Olympics Not Yet on POC’s Radar
So much noise has been created by the country’s fourth-place finish in the Vietnam Southeast Asian Games (SEAG) and Manila’s turn to host the event in 2005 that it seems the country has forgottem all about this August’s Olympic Games in Athens, Greece.
Philippine Olympic Committee (POC) President Celso Dayrit, however, said there’s nothing else that could be done since “we still don’t know who would be sent there, and how many would be sent to compete. Perhaps, by June, we would know who would be sent to compete.” Dayrit said the government would spend between $3,000 to $4,000 per athlete in Greece. In the Vietnam SEA Games, the government shelled out 75,000 pesos per athlete.
Despite the non-existence of a task force for the Athens Olympics, Dayrit said the national athletes kicked off their training for the Olympics “shortly after the 2000 Sydney Games.”
Dayrit also urged the Philippine Sports Commission (PSC) to leave the preparation of the “necessary logistics” to the POC so the PSC can “take care of the athletes training” and “need not worry about the costs.”
