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Philippines, 13 Mar 2026 |
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Bonegraft Saves Young Boxer's Career By Manny Piñol PhilBoxing.com Fri, 06 Jul 2007 Three years ago, American boxing trainer Freddie Roach pointed to a young and tall young boxer as a potential world class fighter. Glenn Gonzales, 18 at that time, a southpaw, impressed Roach because of his "There's No Tomorrow" attitude inside the ring. Once he connects, there's no stopping until the opponent falls or he gets tired. This fighting style has earned Gonzales the monicker "Rapid Fire." What Roach did not know was that while the young Glenn displayed a brave face inside the ring, the young boxer was actually hurting. A broken bone in his left hand gave him the burning feeling everytime he landed a punch. It was an injury that Glenn suffered as an amateur boxer. A former member of the Philippine youth boxing team, Gonzales broke his left hand in sparring with a fellow national boxer in Baguio City where the Amateur Boxing Association of the Philippines brought them for training. The injury was not given attention. Disappointed by the lack of attention given to his injury, Gonzales left the Philippine team and came home to North Cotabato. His love for the sport, however, made him decide to turn professional. His first two fights were spectacular. Both ended in a knockout. But in both fights, he went home with a swollen left hand. The swelling took weeks to subside. In his third fight, he displayed a lackluster performance managing to salvage a draw. After the fight, I summoned Glenn and his parents to a serious talk. Glenn's father, Henry, is my late father's second degree cousin. That makes Glenn my third degree cousin. I asked him in front of his parents what he wanted to do with his life and he said he wanted to box. That was when we decided to consult friends on what to do with the broken left hand. Recah Trinidad, my bosom friend whose connections in the sporting world is as deep as the Marianas Tremch, volunteered the idea of consulting an orthopedic doctor in Manila. Glenn was brought to the National Orthopedic Hospital and was later referred to a young Ortho named Dr. Nilo Carilo. I talked to him by phone and Dr. Carilo told me that the only way to save Glenn's hand was to take out the damaged bone, which he says was shattered beyond repair, and undertake a delicate bone transplant. Dr. Carilo said he would take a piece of bone from Glenn's pelvis and use this as a replacement for the damaged bone. He said he expects this to result in a stronger hand but that it would take a year before Glenn could go back to the ring. Glenn underwent the procedure becoming perhaps the first Filipino boxer to agree to a bone transplant just so he could pursue his boxing career. After a year of rest, Glenn came back for his first fight after a long layoff meeting the tough Gilbert George, a Fil-American, in a 6-round fight in December of last year. It was a slambang but Glenn gathered confidence in his left hand as the fight went on. He stopped George in the fourth round of that bloody fight. Over a month later, Glenn was back in the ring this time against the undefeated knockout puncher from Davao City, Daniel Solis. He knocked down Solis in the first round and Glenn was coming in for the kill when Solis unleashed a powerful right that caught Gonzales flush on the chin sending him to the canvas. It was on pure courage and determination that Glenn was able to stand up. He was in queer street but he continued throwing punches hurting Solis again. In the second round, fully recovered, Glenn came back and knocked out Solis. His third assignment following his comeback was against the veteran Pedro Malco, a highly rated boxer who agreed to fight Glenn in eight rounds. This was the fight that confirmed the big heart of Glenn Gonzales. Bleeding profusely from two cuts in his left and right eyebrows courtesy of Malco headbutts, Glenn dominated the fight to win by unanimous decision. And finally the biggest fight of his career came when he was pitted against Indonesia's Boydo Simanjuntak for the World Boxing Organization Asia Pacific Interim Featherweight Title. It took Glenn a little over two minutes of the first round to knock out the Indonesian. The end for the Indonesian started with a right uppercut that caught him on the chin followed a booming straight courtesy of the "bionic" left hand and four other punches. After the fight, Gonzales told me he remembered the young doctor, Dr. Nilo Carilo, whose talent saved his career."Tama si Doc Carilo. Mas malakas ito kaysa dati," he told me. (Dr. Carilo was right. This is even stronger than before.) The 5'6" tall Gonzales, 21, whose record is now 7 wins, 1 draw with 5 KOs, has been given rave reviews by boxing experts as a fighter to watch and rightly so. He possesses the power, the heart and the determination, qualities which are required for a boxer to become a world champion. Let's welcome on stage, the boxer with the "Bionic Hand," the WBO Interim Asia Pacific Youth Featherweight Champion -- Glenn "Rapid Fire" Gonzales! Click here to view a list of other articles written by Manny Piñol.  |
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