MANILA, Philippines?You can?t help but be amused at Eric Buhain, the dusky, bubbly chair of the Games and Amusements Board.
A former RP swimming standout in the Southeast Asian Games, Buhain is often full of surprises.
It?s hard to predict what he would be up to next.
He could just sprout out of nowhere?and declare something stunning and big.
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Please listen to his latest pronouncement:
?The GAB stops fights when it sees a boxer is unprepared for the match.? (Manila Bulletin, Sept. 26, 2008, page H2).
You can believe that, or simply shrug it off as pure hogwash.
After all, Buhain also happens to be a man of contradictions.
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By the way, that statement from the dazzling GAB chief had something to do with the forthcoming Manny Pacquiao-Oscar de la Hoya fight.
Before that, Buhain had been urged by Rep. Rufus Rodriguez to temporarily freeze Pacquiao?s boxing license in an effort to prevent the staging of the Dec. 6 Dream Match in Las Vegas.
Heeding the request, Buhain told the Agence France-Presse that he had asked the World Boxing Council to cancel the fight because Pacquiao stood no chance against the taller, older, bigger De La Hoya.
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Look, if Buhain had just bothered to check, he would?ve known that the WBC has no jurisdiction over the Pacquiao-De La Hoya bout, mainly because no official championship belt from any of the world boxing bodies is at stake.
It took a senior statesman, the venerable lawyer Rudy Salud, to inform Buhain that there?s only one body, the Nevada State Athletic Commission, which has control and supervision over the Dream Match.
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That?s a forgivable slip, given Buhain?s track record.
But what?s truly bothersome is that Buhain obviously doesn?t know what a real mismatch is all about.
In fact, his office had recently allowed a couple of hopeless Filipino pugs to be sacrificed like punching bags against unbeaten foes in Thailand.
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Did Buhain, together and his immediate chief, President Gloria Macapacal-Arroyo, fail to see anything alarming or dangerous in a previous column here, portions of which we reprint:
This is a red-alert for concerned authorities, including the President of the Philippines, who must act promptly before they get slammed, napping, by another boxing death.
1) Joan de Guia, 6-8-2, was knocked out by undefeated Chonlatorn Pinyapinyo, 27-0, in Ayutthaya, Thailand, last Aug. 31. De Guia was dropped by a right hook to the head before he was crushed by another left shot to the body in the third round.
2) Jayson Lyson, 3-5, was stopped by Thailand?s Pongkluang Sor Singya, 21-0, in the third round of their WBC Youth title fight recently.
Those reports were courtesy of Ronnie Nathanielsz, who posted the stories on philboxing.com, the lead fight website in Asia run by Cebu?s Dong Secuya.
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Mr. Ronnie did not specify, but he wanted to expose the sadists and underworld characters they are harboring at the Games and Amusements Board, which functions directly under the Office of the President.
Mr. Ronnie did not say it, but you need not be a physician to know that those two brutal mismatches, pure and simple, were shameless criminal acts.
It was as foul, unconscionable as sponsoring on-fight paralysis by allowing the outrageously inferior Filipino boxers to be mangled by vastly superior, unbeaten foreign opponents.
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These hungry Pinoy fighters went out on a limb, so to say, and engaged in ring battle with one foot literally in the grave.
The Nathanielsz reports, centering on a couple of new ring atrocities, clearly showed that the justice sense of our government boxing authorities were primitive at best.
At the rate they are exporting hapless, inferior, poorly credentialed Pinoy pugs, it won?t be long before a similar tragedy suffered by Lito Sisnorio, who was killed after figuring in a mismatch in Thailand last year, hits the headlines.
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(CHEERS: From jazz wonderboy Richard Merk: Come to Merk?s Bar Bistro 6th anniversary tonight, Sept. 27, at the Greenbelt 3, level 3 in Makati, see you there mga bosing? Bobby Velasco celebrated the ?event of my life? at his new Caf? de Malate (1888 M.H. del Pilar, Manila) before the Malate Church last Thursday. It was a fullhouse affair among old friends despite the rain and the Ateneo-La Salle championship game.)
