I had a chance to join Ed Picson of Abap the other night, together with Philippine Sports Commission bigwigs Charles Maxey of Davao and Ramon Fernandez of Cebu and Gerald Cañete of the NSA for arnis. It was just after the first day of the PSC-Abap Manny Pacquiao national boxing championships, which is being held at the Mandaue City Sports Center.
I asked Picson, a former sportswriter, if he was already with Abap when the interim WBA featherweight champion Jhack Tepora made the national team. Not only was he with Abap, I surprisingly learned that it was Picson himself who referred him to the national team after a relative from Leyte first spotted the now undefeated boxer when he was an amateur.
A few days ago, Tepora, who was with the national youth team before turning pro, said he’s willing to fight for the country in the Olympics and end the gold-medal drought. I asked Picson about that but he said that Tepora has to go through the qualifiers.
Such a simple statement and that, I think, is why we still don’t have pros fighting in the international game. You see, aside from mandatories or title defense for the champions, sometimes they’d get an “activity fight,” all of these are set by their promoters or sanctioning bodies. If you give a slot in the national team to a pro, he’d run the risk of getting sanctioned or losing his belt if the qualifiers happen to fall during a mandatory.
So, getting Jhack into the Olympics would be only possible if his management gets involved. The risk is is enormous but so are the rewards. Perhaps a marketing campaign?
I remember a few years ago, there was a massive campaign anchored on getting the first Filipino to the summit of Mt. Everest. I hope something similar can be done by the private sector on winning our first Olympic gold medal and it is in boxing that we have the best chance.
However, Jhack’s road to Tokyo 2020 may be tough, but once there, I think his road to the gold won’t be as hard.
It seems the only way to win a gold medal in the Asian Games or Olympics these days is to knock your way out into one. You can’t rely on decisions anymore because strange things seem to happen between the final bell and when the time a decision is read.
The IOC even said that boxing runs the risk of being excluded in the Olympics because of the slow reforms by Aiba, headed by Uzbekistan Gafur Rahimov, a controversial figure whom US authorities have linked to organized crime. Uzbekistan, curiously, had seven boxers in the Asian Games and all seven made the finals with only two losses. If that doesn’t raise your eyebrow, I don’t know what will.
And if you’re waiting for a new president to instill reforms in Aiba, better wait for the first confirmed extra-terrestrial sighting; to be able to run for Aiba president, you have to be part of the executive committee, and to be part of the executive committee, you have to be pretty chummy with the powers that be. It’s a dictionary definition of an Old Boys’ Club.
So, it could be possible that our best and only chance to win a gold in boxing in the Olympics is in 2020 because come 2024, it won’t be part of the program.