Salute to Salud

By Al S. Mendoza

NEARLY 40 years ago today, Rudy Salud, popularly known as the former commissioner of the Philippine Basketball Association (PBA), traded dried fish.

Surprised?

Think again.

Rudy did that to tide his family by.

It was not of his liking that he got into that.

It was like this:

He wasn’t only building a family, but also a career in law – having just passed the bar after a sterling stint at Ateneo.

And then Marcos blunted the dream.

Marcos’ martial law displaced not only Rudy.  Thousands.  Including yours truly.  (But me is another story.)

“Almost night and day, I traveled the length of the Maharlika Highway from Manila to Bicol, as a dried fish merchant to make both ends meet,” Rudy said to me, years after surviving the harrowing ordeal brought on by the early years of the dictatorship, when he had yet to assume the top PBA post in 1988.

In time, he’d rebound from that nightmare that was not of his own infliction.

Credit that to his resiliency – and his innate character of fighting back when the chips are down, when his back is against the wall.

If there’s one person who’d do anything to achieve his objective, fulfill his dream, that’d be Rudy Salud.

Not even a bullet train at top speed could stop him from pursuing a goal once he put his mind to it.

If you think about it now, if you pause to reflect on what Rudy’s gone through early on during that unlamented Marcos era, you will, perhaps, never imagine Rudy doing what he did.

Just years before the declaration of martial law in 1972, Rudy wasn’t only an emerging Young Turk of a lawyer.

For one, his sharpness of mind started to draw the attention of some of the Big City’s high and the mighty – like Nemesio Yabut(+) and Danding Cojuangco.

For another, his boldness bore no equal.

It began through his love of boxing.

Justiniano Montano, then a political stalwart of Cavite but a boxing buff himself, immediately took notice of Rudy’s brilliance.

He got Rudy under his wings and, together, they formed the core of the breakaway group from the World Boxing Association (WBA) that established the World Boxing Council (WBC): Montano as president, Salud as secretary-general.

It took not only guts, but also, of course, tons of money to undertake such a gigantic mission.

The money, Justiniano provided.  Generously.

The guts?

You guessed it right: They were Rudy’s.  Lots of ‘em.

But Rudy had not only guts.  His idealism, coupled with his crystal-clear mind of visionary dimensions, was the single spark that made what the WBC is today – the No. 1 boxing association in the world.

Four of Manny Pacquiao’s eight world titles today are vintage WBC.

Nonito Donaire Jr.’s world bantamweight title that he had just collared through his classic second-round knockout of Fernando Montiel is vintage WBC.

The seven years that Flash Elorde reigned world junior lightweight champion from 1960-1967 were all vintage WBC.

The Constitution & By-Laws alone of the WBC that Rudy Salud authored is carved in granite and entombed in front – at the entrance – of the famed Madison Square Garden in New York City, duly signed by Rudy Salud.

When they laid to rest the remains of Rudy Salud on March 10, 2011, they didn’t seal, nor did they dispose of, the story that was Rudy Salud.

They merely enriched his legacy for, in death, nothing’s really lost in the legend behind the name, Rudy Salud.

It even embellished the luster and magnitude of the man for all seasons.

Rudy Salud, a bastion of everything good and great, would have turned 73 today, March 13.

If I say I won’t miss him, start calling me a Ligot.

Liar would be an understatement.

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