Pinoy Pride Fruits

The Pinoy Pride Series reached its eighth edition last night with Milan Melindo fighting Francisco Rosas in the main event. In a brave and daring drive to elevate its involvement in boxing to another level, ALA Promotions has successfully produced a boxing event that looks to last for a long time. And it looks like Team ALA’s latest venture is hitting a lot of birds with just one swift force of a Pacman left straight.

We can still remember when ALA was just busy with training amateur and pro boxers then going out to promote boxing cards for the sole purpose of giving its boxers a chance to fight on top of the ring. With luck and the right network, their boxers would find their way up the ladder of pro boxing. However, the toughest battle then wasn’t on top of the ring. It was the thought (or reality) of losing money in every promotion due to several factors, the heaviest being the absence of partners and sponsors who could help out in taking care of the usual expenses of a boxing event. And yes, boxing is not cheap.

But that was then. In the 90s, they were losing money in major events. The years between 2000-2008 saw ALA go on a series of partnerships with a host of local promoters and TV programs. These came and went, and while both sides finally made money (I think), neither side was really ecstatic about the set-up. Something was missing. Later came partnerships with likes of Golden Boy Promotions and Top Rank wherein ALA boxers would be sent to the United States. But this, too, wasn’t seen as the most ideal scheme that would benefit local boxing.

 Then came the entry of ALA Promotions. We all knew the “old” ALA to be all about boxing: train, fight, train some more. We knew ALA to be literally “ALA Boxing” before “Promotions” was born. Ironically, it all came after they decided to do it by themselves through a younger, brand new team and drive. The rationale was fairly simple. They were confident that aside from training boxers, they could also put up boxing events that would hit two important tasks: showcase the country’s top prospects for a world title and earn money while at it! With eight editions down, ALA has proven that tying up with broadcast giant ABS-CBN was a good, strategic move. It now looks like the Kapamilya network could do for boxing what it has done for the UAAP and NCAA, albeit in a different manner. But the bottom line is that boxing is now more “acceptable” to the TV audience. Also more importantly, sponsors have now come in to make big time boxing possible. All seven editions of Pinoy Pride have done well in both TV ratings and ticket sales. The standard venue is now the Waterfront Hotel with the Hoops Dome certain to become an alternative venue. Another SOP has been the arrival of foreign opponents from Mexico, the country’s favorite “rival.” Last night’s event had three Mexicans on board. We also had a Canadian last month. We’re now seeing ALA’s other facet fast shaping up to become the jewel it never had before. It’s being an event manager for its own events has struck gold. They’re now even going beyond their own boxers. They’ve signed up boxers of other boxing gyms and these include Japanese boxers. This is most welcome news for local boxing. We finally have big time boxing similar to what they have abroad and there’s no need for us to go outside to taste it.

But we also have to remember that amidst all this momentary success is the need to also produce world beaters out of this series of events. What good is a Pinoy Pride series reaching over 200 editions if it doesn’t produce a world champion? ALA Promotions doesn’t want to be known for being just an organizer of events featuring a bunch of perpetual “prospects,” do they? How long can we go on watching likes of Melindo and AJ Banal in “tune-up” fights? We’re not going to be “Pinoy” proud about boxers being tagged as “future” world beaters forever. We’d like to see them become world champions in the future. Only then will we be able to fully appreciate what Pinoy Pride is all about.

 With Donnie Nietes fighting for a world championship in Pinoy Pride 9 next month, this could be the start of bigger things to come. Pinoy Pride will thus become the road that top boxers will have to take to become world champs. Note that we’ve had the likes of ALA Promotions-managed boxers Rommel Asenjo and Edrin Dapudong losing in title fights recently. It surely won’t be easy, will it?

At the end of the day, we’d like to see win-win situation out of all this. ALA Promotions will make money out of its new endeavors and produce the world champions.

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Timeout: Happy birthday to Sai Bacalso! >>> You can reach me at [email protected].