KORONADAL CITY — More than giving glory to his country, he wanted to help his family the only way he knew how — with his fists.
Those fists will never find any man’s jaw again.
On Saturday, former World Boxing Council youth flyweight titleholder Angelito “Lito” Sisnorio Jr. of Koronadal City died of bleeding in the brain in a Thailand hospital after being knocked out the previous night by former Thai world champion Chatchai Sasakul.
Sisnorio had turned pro in 2003 and had had less than a dozen fights, according to the website http://www.boxrec.com.
He was dead on his 11th fight. He was 24.
Even Chatchai wept on hearing of his death.
“I can’t express in words my sadness,” Chatchai was quoted as saying by the Bangkok Post newspaper. “I didn’t sleep on Saturday worrying about him … I am sure I will always see Lito every time I go into the ring.”
Another Thai boxer whom Sisnorio once fought, WBC flyweight king Pongsaklek Wonjongkam, was also in tears, the Post said.
“I am shocked by his death,” it quoted Pongsaklek as saying. “He fought very hard with counterpunches and we had a great fight in Mae Sot.”
Now, all Sisnorio’s family wants is to have his body back home. On Monday, they appealed to President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo and Filipino ring idol Manny Pacquiao to help make this possible.
It was Pacquiao’s ring successes, among others, that inspired Sisnorio to also strive for boxing fame, his older brother Gerry said.
The eighth child, Sisnorio was born on Oct. 10, 1982. He soon saw how hard life was for his family. Living in a shack on a farm here, he thought of ways to alleviate his family’s situation.
Days as a farm boy
His parents have been running a small coffee and banana farm for more than two decades and could hardly make both ends meet. The farm was never enough to put food on the table and send the nine children to school.
Before boxing plucked him from obscurity, Sisnorio had also gone into farming. His sun-scorched skin showed how hard he had worked to raise quality coffee beans and bananas for seasonal harvests.
“He spent those days [in the sun] because he wanted something more for us at the end of the day,” Gerry said.
The hard work paid off. Soon, Sisnorio was enrolled in a criminology school at the MSST College of Technology in Koronadal City.
Lure of boxing
But the young farm boy couldn’t resist the lure of boxing. He dropped out of school, convinced that boxing was his main purpose in life.
“Watching his idol Gerry Pe?alosa’s fight in the Olympics and Manny Pacquiao’s fame triggered his hunger to learn the ropes of boxing,” Gerry said.
Turning pro in 2003, he racked up three straight wins, including one by knockout.
Glory with the right hook
In his seventh fight, he had his brush with glory. Fighting in Bangkok as an underdog in May last year, Sisnorio finished off the highly favored Fahpetchnoi Sor Chitpattana with a right hook in the fifth round to capture the WBC youth flyweight title.
As fate would have it, he lost his title by decision five months later to another Thai fighter.
“Lito was a real boxing hero. He fought a good fight until the end. He was a legend,” Gerry said. He said all his brother wanted “was to give us a better life.”
Gerry recalled that in their last talk in December last year, he asked his brother to help him start a piggery.
“Lito always had a generous heart, he promised that when he comes home this month he will give me some (money),” he said.
Then, came the news from a relative in Manila of Sisnorio’s death in Bangkok. It was the death, too, of the young boxer’s dreams for his family.
“All we desire right now is to see his body but we don’t know just yet what to do,” Gerry said in an interview at a radio station here where the family aired their appeal for help from various groups in South Cotabato province.
Where’s the manager?
Juanita Velasco, Lito’s elder sister, called on Ms Arroyo and Pacquiao to help them get the body of her brother back.
“We appeal to them to help us also in locating the whereabouts of his Chinese promoter and manager in Manila,” Velasco said.
She said a Kidapawan City-based local boxing manager, a certain Contayoso, handled his brother before a Chinese man took over as the last manager.
Reports from Bangkok said Sisnorio underwent emergency surgery on Friday to remove a blood clot from his brain after he fell unconscious on his way to dinner, hours after suffering a fourth-round knockout loss to Chatchai.
A guerrilla operation
He never regained consciousness after the surgery.
Chatchai, the man who beat him, lost his own WBC flyweight crown to Pacquiao in 1998.
North Cotabato Gov. Emmanuel Pi?ol said he was still getting details of Sisnorio’s trip to Thailand and that “if it’s necessary, I will go to Thailand to get the body.”
“I heard that he went out of the country without the necessary papers,” Pi?ol said. “It seems that the operation is like guerrilla. They are bringing boxers from other countries without papers.”
“In fact, one of our boxers, Gomy Donato, was brought to Thailand twice without the knowledge of his manager. This is something that the government must look into,” Pi?ol added.
Someone must answer
Rey Golingan, chair of the Amateur Boxing Association of the Philippines (ABAP) in General Santos City, said such incident could have been avoided if Sisnorio tried to secure permission from the Games and Amusement Board (GAB) before going to Thailand.
Golingan also said Sisnorio should have honed his boxing skills here before trying his luck abroad.
Available records showed that in his brief career of 11 fights, Lito won five, lost five and drew one.
“His record was still lean and yet he had to fight someone like Chatchai Sasakul,” he said.
He asked government authorities to sanction those responsible in bringing Sisnorio to Thailand. With PDI Research and a report from Aquiles Zonio, Inquirer Mindanao
