Monday, June 18, 2007 SGG to stage boxing’s Asian Cup in August
AFTER the failure to bag the multi-million dollar Boxing World Cup, Cebu’s prime boxing promoter Sammy Gello-ani is now on the finishing touches of the “more realistic” Asian Cup Boxing, which will feature upcoming fighters from active boxing countries in Asia.
“Actually we already had scheduled our first Asian Cup promotion. It’s between the Philippines vs. Thailand on August,” Gello-ani said.
However, unlike the pricier World Cup, where the best fighters from the Philippines and Mexico would have slugged out for glory, the Asian Cup is only for boxers under 23.
Talents
“It’s solely for the youth boxers, because we want to develop young talents around Asia. Luckily we have new breed of promoters who are willing to engage and gamble on this project,” Gello-ani added.
Aside from Thailand, Gello-ani have Lee Dong-Gyu and Boxing Plaza’s Park Yong Min as partners in Korea, Japan’s most influential promoter Akihiko Honda and an Indonesia counterpart to count on.
“Actually, we are currently negotiating with Honda. And he is very interested in this venture, since he is also interested in promoting WBO belts,” said Gello-ani.
Partner
Gello-ani’s principal partner in this endeavor is the WBO Asia Pacific chairman Leon Panoncillo Jr., who is equally enthusiastic with this program.
“Leon has been very supportive. We are talking largely about the youth program and here it is, we managed to come up with this idea and hopefully we could extend this program to other Asian nations who are also willing to gamble on the idea of developing young and prospective boxers,” explained Gello-ani.
But unluckily, the Philippines youthful and rising stars AJ Banal and Rey Bautista will not be a part of this project.
“They are already at the peak and we could not bring them down to this level. This is for the upstarts and our aim here is to discover and expose prospects,” said Gello-ani. (RCM)
