THERE WERE a lot of interesting reactions to my column about the “Asian boxing Mafia” (13/05/05). Mostly, they agreed that Japan seems to have a stranglehold of big fights involving Asians, mostly Filipinos and Thais.
One reader went one step farther: Japanese champions don’t get out of their country anymore to defend their crowns.
“Could it be that a defense abroad by a Japanese champion would not be in accordance with a Japanese promoter’s business policy, which is to control promotions and limit them only to Japan’s territories to ensure that money derived from the fights are confined to Japanese soil?”
I believe so.
Look, twice Gerry Pe?alosa traveled to Japan to challenge for the world crown, first in Tokyo and then in Yokohama.
On both fights, Pe?alosa lost to Tokuyama on points.
On both fights, Pe?alosa was victim of sloppy officiating.
In dismay, Pe?alosa, one of our finest boxers ever to don a championship belt, retired.
But Pe?alosa is back and, through the kindness of his former manager, Rudy Salud, the former world flyweight champion is now in Florida training since Feb. 8, in the company of world-class fighter Z Gorres.
What a man, this Rudy Salud. He’s not Pe?alosa?s manager anymore and yet, he keeps on helping the boxer.
May I nominate him as godfather of professional boxing, if there’s such a position in sports in this troubled nation of ours?
Anyway, the reader went on to say: “It’s about time that Japan’s stranglehold of fights in Asia is exposed. We are all behind you in this crusade.”
Not only are big fights controlled by the Japanese, they also dip their hands into small bouts.
Notice the exodus of Filipino boxers to Japan.
The lure of the yen has brought our own pugilists to the Land of the Rising Sun — even if, to many of them, a bout there was only a passport for them to go TNT after the fight.
I’ve heard of so many Filipino fighters in Japan forced to embrace a life of inhuman conditions — either that they suffered vicious knockouts due mainly to their inexperience and then left to fend for their own at hospitals, or pushed to do menial jobs after one fight just to escape the squalor prevalent in Philippine conditions.
Our own government, through the Games and Amusements Board, is partly to blame for this.
As I said here a while back, Manny Pacquiao is to earn $1.750 million in his fight against Erik Morales on Sunday, March 20, in Las Vegas. Manny has set the trend: Skip Japan, go to America.
In Japan, the biggest purse given to a foreign fighter is $350,000, when the truth is, Japanese promoters can also raise purses to million-dollar levels if they want to.
That is so because of the Mafia-style system in Japan, which gives puny purses to foreign fighters and allows the syndicate to pocket the main bulk of earnings of every fight.
Oh, well, it’s been that way since the Nineties, I guess, and it’s got to end now, somehow.
Incidentally, Hermie Rivera, the manager of two-time world champion Luisito Espinosa, said he would not predict the winner in the Pacquiao-Morales fight.
Said Hermie in his letter to me: “I wouldn’t want to pick a winner in this one. Not that I’m unprepared to choose the likely victor. It’s just that I find it risky. Remember Marco Antonio Barrera? Besides, the Gensan Marvel hasn’t lost a fight since he beat sensationally as a first replacement — Lehlo Ledwaba. It boils down really on how one looks at it. Which is why the entire boxing world is still split on how this one will turn out. I only hope the eventual winner will not destroy his victim beyond recovery.”
I believe Morales can’t destroy Pacquiao.
Only Pacquiao, with his bull-strong punch, is capable of destroying an opponent. And that includes Morales.
