Tuesday, August 21, 2007 Tipon leads RP bets in World Championships By Henry C. Villalva
SITIO Sibucao, Barangay Banago, Bacolod City native Joan Tipon who took home a gold medal in the bantamweight men’s boxing competition of the 15th Asian Games in Doha, Qatar last year has been named to banner the country’s boxing squad to this year’s World Boxing Championships slated October 23 to November 3 in chicago, USA together with flyweight Violito Payla, the other Asiad gold medalist.
The prestigious world competition will serve as qualifying event for the 2008 Beijing Olympics where the top eight finishers in each division automatically earn slots to the Olympics in Beijing.
Tipon said he wants to perform well in the Chicago event so that he will no longer have to campaign in the other qualifying tournaments but will instead concentrate on training.
“But I believe it would be a tough event since the number of entries have increased from 75 in the 2005 edition to 118 now because a lot of countries aim to qualify for the Beijing Olympics,” Tipon, the former Negros Amateur Boxing Association (NABA) child prodigy told SunStar Bacolod in a phone interview last weekend.
Tipon also confirmed that four more boxers will be joining him and Payla in the Chicago campaign and that the final composition of the RP team will be announced soon by Amateur Boxing Association of the Philippines (Abap) president Manny Lopez. Two other qualifying tournaments for the 2008 Beijing Olympics that have been scheduled after the world championships are slated in Thailand and Kazakhstan next year.
Tipon said he was happy to know that Naba has resumed its inter-barangay boxing competition in cooperation with the provincial government of Negros Occidental through Governor Joseph Maranon and that Capitol has adopted Naba’s grassroots development program as its own. “This is good news. I hope more boxers from the barangays all over Negros will be discovered through this program since the RP team needs fresh talents to always replenish our ranks,” Tipon said in Pilipino.
“Sana tuloy-tuloy na yan,” he added. Tipon, the only member of the RP team who has won golds in both the 2005 Southeast Asian Games and the 2006 Asian Games, is currently training in Baguio City in preparation for his World Championships stint. “Nagbabawas po ako ng timbang,” he told this writer in a telephone conversation last night.
