The mark of a true champion is not how many wins he has on his record. It also isn’t in how many opponents that he blast out early in a fight. No, the mark of a true champion is how he handles and comes back from adversity.
This is the road that AJ Banal has traveled in the last year. A promising knockout artist until one fateful night in July of 2008. It was on that night that Bazooka would step into the ring with Rafael Concepcion. Many thought that Concepcion would be one more step on the way up for Banal. A step that would ultimately lead to the top of the bantamweight rankings and a future title shot.
Instead, AJ ran into a man just as determined to win as he was. The end result was that Banal was stopped in the tenth round. The end was also somewhat confusing. Banal down on a knee , looking towards his corner for help as he was counted out. It appeared to be more of a combination of confusion and exhaustion that did the young slugger in on that night.
Some in the boxing community believed that AJ had overtrained. They point to the fact that in other fights it seemed that Bazooka had lost steam as the bout had progressed.
Sometimes it falls on the fighter himself. George Foreman has said many times before that big punchers seem to tense up before and during a fight. The result being that by the fifth round a fighter feels that he has already gone ten rounds. The second coming of big George was a man that was totally relaxed in the ring. Only AJ can conquer that issue because that is mental. No amount of training can help that. If, in fact , that was a problem.
It didn’t help to know that some considered him the heir apparent to Manny Pacquiao. High praises like that are both a blessing and a curse. The blessing being that people believe in your ability. The curse being that there is only one Pacquiao and AJ must have felt added pressure not to let his supporters down.
Now AJ prepares to take step three in his comeback when he squares off against Jose Angel Beranza in Hawaii on August 29. He hopes to get back to where he was before the Concepcion fight. A fighter with loads of talent and power who is on the verge of breaking into the bigtime.
So relax AJ. You’re still young and extremely talented. And know that that your fans are still behind you. Now you just need to go out and be the best Bazooka that you can be.
