Sports Eye
Up in boxing, down in basketball
By Jesus A. Garcia Jr.
UNLIKE in basketball where our national team lost badly in the FIBA Asia World Qualifying Championships held in Tianjin, China last week, our international boxers, two out of three, again showed their dexterity and brought honor anew to our country.
Spearheading our victorious professional boxers is Gen. Santos City-born Nonito Donaire Jr., who captured the World Boxing Association (WBA) interim super flyweight crown by pummeling former world champion Rafael Concepcion of Panama City. The other lucky Filipino brawler is Bacolod City native Mark Jason Melligen who technically knocked out Mexican veteran prizefighter Ernesto Zepeda in the fourth round.
Our not-so-lucky pug is the world’s number one contender Bernabe Concepcion who failed to wrest the World Boxing Organization (WBO) featherweight crown through disqualification. Concepcion, unaware that the bell already rang in the seventh round, threw a solid and deadly two punches that knocked down cooled defending champion Steven Luevano, which prompted the referee to disqualify the cocky Filipino boxer. After the verdict was pronounced, Top Rank Promotions top honcho Bob Arum said he will work out a rematch to know once and for all who’s who in the WBO featherweight division.
I wish the return bout would be held in our country. If that happens, I will surely sacrifice to watch it in person. Like I said, boxing is my number two favorite sports, next to cycling. And the other reason is, my nephew Jorge Garcia Alvarez is connected with the Luevano camp as one of the trainers.
What’s happening in the international boxing scene is the opposite of what’s being accomplished by our national cage players. In the recent two Asian big tourneys, our nationals, selected from the cream of the crop of PBA, suffered two consecutive setbacks and eventually landing eighth out of 16 countries and failed to qualify for the world championship scheduled next year in Turkey. Countries like Qatar, Jordan, South Korea, Lebanon, Chinese-Taipei and especially Iran, whose teams we used to plaster during the days of the legends Carlos Loyzaga and Robert Jaworski, are no longer pushovers. They are now demolishing and booting us out in continental tournaments. They did it in 2007 during the FIBA Asia Olympic Qualifying Championship held in Japan where our delegation finished ninth, duplicated our debacle during this year’s Jones Cup and the latest was the China stint. If I were to describe it, our Asian neighbors in this sport invented by James Naismith took off like a spaceship Apollo (vertical), while ours was like a big and heavy jumbo jet 747 with 25 or 30 degrees slant. It’s really awful.
Former governor Oscar Orbos and I exchanged text messages after our RP squad was eliminated by Jordan. Orbos said, “Dapat huwag nang gumastos, mag aksaya pa sa basketball international competitions.” Yes, we do love basketball, but let’s just enjoy our local basketball, and even the NBA. It’s better that we just use our resources for the development of boxing, cycling, billiards, soccer and other sports where Filipinos will excel, where ‘height is not might.’ No more international competition for basketball, mahal at saying lang ang pera at resources.
His second text message says, “Akala ng Pinoy maggugulangang lahat may abilidad daw.. but basketball bottom line needs height.. Maybe 20 years from now pag dumami lahi ng black Fil-Am baka sakali balik tayo international competition sa basketball.”
I had lunch with journalists Rhee Hortaleza and Jun Velasco last Wednesday and we talked about what happened to our RP quintet in China.
Velasco said, “Filipinos are cut off in basketball because we are short so we should stop patronizing this kind of sport. Di na ako nanunuod kasi disgusted na ako eh.”
Hortaleza echoed this saying, “Yes, because it is an admitted dictum that height is might in basketball, so no chance for the gold even in Asia. Sayang lang ang panahon at gastos.”
I agree with them. I’m receiving the same sentiments from my friends abroad. They say “we’ll just treat it as an entertainment like Eat Bulaga or Wowoowee.”
But then again, I say, let’s give them enough international exposure before the Asiad, baka sakali maka-tsamba ang ating labis na hinahangaan PBA squad although that would mean at the expense of the people. It will be wrong then.
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