Pinoy Pride revisited

Another Pinoy Pride. Another packed venue. Another TV high rater. Another Pinoy Win. Pinoy Pride indeed.

After 13 editions of Pinoy Pride and a host of others before these that weren’t part of the series, it sure looks like the series has now become a significant part of local boxing. I can still remember when it was tough for local boxing to find a regular niche on TV, one that would draw high ratings and consequently the much-needed revenues from advertisers. The only clear boxing events that really caught a lot of attention and money were Manny Pacquiao’s fights. ABS-CBN and GMA hardly gave local boxing any attention, probably due to the fact that boxing was not a show watched by a wide audience on TV. No audience, no advertisers. It was that simple. But today, we’re seeing a totally different story, aren’t we? It now looks like this tie-up of ALA Promotions and ABS-CBN Sports is going to last for a long time.

So where is Pinoy Pride now? And where is it going? After a series of successful runs, they suffered a minor bump with the “Genaro Garcia” fiasco, but have moved on quickly, thanks to AJ Banal’s win over Raul Hidalgo last week. The best way to erase a booboo is through another boxing event, another Pinoy Pride. I’d like to go back to the time when ALA Promotions was set up with a new drive to dive deeper into the promotions game and not just managing boxers. They wanted to bring world-class boxing to Cebu and other parts of the country and even opened up to promoting fights for boxers outside the ALA Gym. When they re-engineered, I was looking at ALA competing with Teiken Promotions of Akihiko Honda in Japan as Asia’s top boxing promotions team. As far as staging boxing fights is concerned, ALA matches up with Teiken already. We even have better produced boxing events from the technical side of things. The bottom line has also been rosy for ALA with ABS-CBN and generous sponsors now coming in to support Pinoy Pride. And so after 13 editions, it sure looks like everything is going very well.

But I’d like to push it further. If there’s one aspect that separates Teiken from ALA, it would have to be in the staging of world championship fights for Pinoys. I don’t think ALA Promotions is in the boxing business only for the sake of staging fights. If this was their purpose for Pinoy Pride, the series would die a natural death. It’s time to raise the bar and I’m sure that ALA’s strategists are thinking this way. Sure, it’s not sin to stage a series of fights that will be labelled as mere “tune-up” or “preparatory” fights. But the boxing fan is also discriminating, and knows that we can’t go on forever with just “tune-up” fights. It’s time to bring on the big fights when the timing is right for our top Pinoy boxers. When Donnie Nietes won his world championship last year, the timing was ripe since he was moving up in weight after defending his WBO world minimumweight title and fighting some tune-up fights. That was well-timed. All Pinoy Prides before that were all non-title fights for ALA’s top boxers. If you talk about the big fights, I would have to go back to the Gorres-Montiel and Gorres-Darchinyan fights as benchmarks. Those were classic fights. The x-factor of these fights was the odds for the fight were even. In fact, Gorres was considered a slight underdog in both fights. These were fights that fans really wanted to see. They didn’t want to see a Pinoy go up the ring, knowing he was already a sure bet to win since the opponent was inferior.

This brings us to the status of AJ Banal and Milan Melindo, ALA’s two boxers who are considered ripe for a shot at a world title. Banal is already lined up for a world title shot at the bantamweight division of both the WBO and IBF, while Melindo continues to look for that big break and timing in the flyweight division. But it sure looks like the timing is due for both of them. A world title fight for either of them in the Philippines is going to define Pinoy Pride’s legacy. All those fights under the lights of PP need to have a direction. And isn’t a world title an ultimate dream for a boxer and boxing promoter? Yes, there are chances that both could lose in a world title fight, but isn’t this what boxing is all about?

Pinoy Pride is levelling up. And we all can’t wait.

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Time-out: The Milo-backed BEST basketball clinic will be held May 14-19, 2012, at the Sacred Heart School-Ateneo de Cebu Mango Avenue Campus Gym. >>> You can reach me at [email protected].