EVERYTHING in boxing is backwards says Scrap, Morgan Freeman’s character in Million Dollar Baby.
In boxing, you generate momentum to let loose a stinging fist from your stubby toe. If you want to move left, you don’t step left. You push with your right toe. To move right, you push with your left toe.
In hitting, shift your weight to the right foot to hit with a left, and move your weight to the left foot to hit with a right.
And for us periodistas who went to watch the fights over at the packed to overflowing Mandaue Cultural and Sports Center late Saturday night, a world in reverse was especially real. There were 10 fights in the Sammy Gello-ani card that had a rather hackneyed title – A Dream Come True. Paul Taneo, a good friend and mentor for many years, brought me to see the matches.
The production featured the 12-round action between Oriental Pacific Boxing Federation (OBPF) super-flyweight contsenders Z Gorres, fighting from the ALA stable, and Thai Waengpetch Chuwatana, the former OPBF super-flyweight champion, in the main event.
UNDERCARD. But ask sports photographer and upcoming boxing pundit Allan Defensor and he’ll say only one event, the undercard 10-round fight between “Czar” Amonsot and Thai Decho Bankluaygym, will stay with him for the years to come.
A converted southpaw, Cesar Augustus Amonsot of Tagbilaran City, Bohol, has a promising career with a 13-1-1 with 10 KOs record, prior to Saturday night’s fight. One of Antonio L. Aldeguer’s Golden Boys, he has had six fights outside the country. His only loss, the Feb. 15, 2005 TKO to Indonesian Simson Butar Butar in Jakarta, was among those foreign bouts. After last Saturday’s affair, he moved up to 14-1-1, claiming victory via unanimous decision after a full 10 rounds of bone-jarring action.
Bankluaygym, similarly, shows bright potential with a 20-6-1 career with 14 KOs. His fights – he debuted on March 24, 2001 and was rewarded with a 14-match win streak – were mostly held in Thailand.
Action was quick after the opening bell in that undercard match. Round by round, the eager pugilists bolted from their respective corners and crossed mitts to the point of exhaustion. The local ALA boy, perhaps emboldened by a supportive local crowd, if not support of a very well funded ALA gym, set the pace. Amonsot was the aggressor and remained the aggressor until the final round.
He was out for blood and nothing to him would be more rewarding than to see the red-hot living liquid, as red as the ALA emblazoned on his jet black trunks, flow from the cuts on an enemy’s face and spill into the dirty-white canvas.
UNDERDOG. But the Thai was no easy prey. He circled whenever assaulted and went with each punch that landed, throwing twin hooks by way of counter.
And he had fortitude. Too exhausted to pursue the bouncing, dancing and dodging Amonsot, he dropped his gloves and exposed his chin to invite Amonsot to dig in. Then, he’d throw twin hooks that sometimes landed.
He knew he had to survive. The hell that faced him in the ring here might have been daunting but it was far better than the hell that awaited him and many other Thai boxers – poverty and the lack of opportunities – back home. Like all other athletes fighting from less-moneyed stables, he must have thought that, maybe, if he fought well here, some manager scouting for talent might see and give him the necessary training for that one big break.
The drama in the corners in between rounds was just as gripping. While ALA boy Amonsot returned to his corner, getting rubbed down by his seconds the way Vegas fighters are treated by managers like Freddie Roach, Bankluaygym sat in a plastic monobloc chair with his handler pouring water from a mineral water bottle on his head.
His twin brother, Dechampol, who’d lost to another ALA Golden Boy A.J. Banal in a swift first-round knockout, gave him the rubdown.
“Boxing is the red-light district of sports,” one sportswriter quoted an ancient boxing maxim upon noticing that the disparity bothered me. One journalist then suggested that the Thai corner should just throw in the towel. Then I noticed that their corner didn’t even have a towel.
In a world where everything is in reverse, how one loses is just as telling as how one wins.
