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ROMANIAN AMBASSADOR VISITS ALA GYM
PhilBoxing.com Tue, 06 May 2008
Romanian Ambassador Valeriu Gheorghe paid an unexpected visit to ALA Gym-Nasipit yesterday to personally see the fabled boxing gym that has caught his attention. Cebu Consul to Romania Grand Benedicto joined him in the afternoon visit. The visit came at a right time when amateur and professional boxers took their daily routine of basic and tactical training while children, as young as nine years old, started coming in for their own boxing training.
Cebu?s prominent boxing patron Antonio ?Tony? Aldeguer welcomed Gheorghe with pleasure as he walked him around the bustling gym overflowing with young pugilists, with the professional warriors slugging it out against the bags and weights and at each other in no-holds-barred sparring rounds and the very young beginners spread around the grassy oval shadow boxing.
Gheorghe took special notice on the fact that poor children are able to get in and out of the gym for a free boxing training. And considering the expensive boxing equipments in the gym, ?it fascinates me to learn that no government funds came into it,? he observed. The gym is an out of pocket work of the heart for the less privileged future warriors of Cebu.
Romania is home to at least 31 Olympic medalists, former world amateur boxing champions such as Marian Simion and Zulta Lunka, and world professional boxing champions in the likes of Mihai Leu (reigning WBO welterweight), Lucian Bute (IBF super middleweight), Leonard Doroftei (former WBA lightweight), and still undefeated Adrian Diaconu (WBC light heavyweight).
Since the ALA Gym-Nasipit started honing boxing talents in the 70s, it has brought to the international scene names that have made Filipinos proud of. It is the training ground to its first world boxing champion, reigning WBO world minimumweight Donnie Nietes. It has also produced regional champions and currently world rated and upcoming title contenders such as Rey Bautista (super bantamweight), Z Gorres (super flyweight0, and AJ Banal (super flyweight).
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