MANILA, Philippines ? Ricky Sismundo is a man with many homes, yet a man without one.
Sismundo is a Filipino junior welterweight boxer who lives and trains in Japan. His trainer is Japanese, and the vast majority of his fights have taken place in Japan, but as he was born in Ubay in Bohol – the same Philippine province where boxing champ Nonito Donaire Jr was born – those who follow his career are mostly Filipino. However, it is the Canadian audience that is most familiar with his in-ring work. Online footage of Sismundo is scarce, but the two biggest fights of his career have taken place in Montreal, Quebec.
Even Quebec itself is somewhat marginalized within its own country. In 1995, the province was but a few percentage points away from separating from the country completely in a national referendum. Though tensions have died down over the years, Quebec still harbors a culture all its own. Within the world of boxing, it is known as one of the sport’s true hotbeds, a place where arenas can still be filled for an event, and where its fighters are covered with regularity in print media and on television.
That enthusiasm does not extend to the rest of Canada, however. So Ricky Sismundo’s notoriety is relegated to a niche community within a French-speaking province in Canada, the only one among 13 in the nation.
That is to say that very few people knew Ricky Sismundo could really fight.
Sismundo signed on to face Canadian-based welterweight Ghislain Maduma on December 22 in Montreal. As a general rule, Sismundo isn’t given much notice about when he’s going to be fighting. As a fighter without a powerhouse manager, much less a promoter, he doesn’t have the clout to command those types of luxuries. As a result, he has lost some fights that he perhaps could have won with a longer training camp, netting him 9 losses altogether, along with 3 draws.
The party line amongst fighters in Sismundo’s position is often that other fighters purposely give them as little notice as possible because they are afraid of what they would be able to do with a full camp. There is indeed some truth to this logic. Often times managers and matchmakers will notify their charge that they will have a fight on a given date well in advance, have them train for weeks, and then lock down an opponent some time within the final two weeks leading up to said date. Sometimes that’s by design, other times it’s because an opponent genuinely couldn’t be locked down, or another had fallen out. In any event, it puts the ?home? fighter in an enviable position, having trained properly and been focused on a peak time weeks prior to the opponent even knowing about the matchup.
In truth, if a matchmaker brings an opponent in on short notice, it’s often because he or she doesn’t think that fighter is very good. It would be poor business in most cases to shock the fighter of a promoter who is paying you with an outstanding opponent.
