Monsour’s memories

Elite athletes all over the world are known by their first names, and the Philippines is no exception. But even among our sports legends, there are very few whose recall is such that you know who you’re talking about just from their given names: Paeng, Bata, Lydia. There is one, however, whose name was, in itself, unique: Monsour.

I caught up with Monsour de Rosario at the 28th National Taekwondo Championships at the Ninoy Aquino Stadium yesterday. From a small event of roughly 200 fighters, the competition has ballooned to over 1,700 participants. I asked Monsour, retired for over a decade now, what his earliest memories of the sport were.

"A lot of pain," del Rosario smiled. "Master Hong (Philippine taekwondo Association vice-president and chief instructor Sung Chon Hong) was like a warden in a jail cell. You couldn’t do anything, especially if you were on the Philippine team. But that was how we became tough."

The skinny teen soon moved up in rank and skill. At close to six feet tall, his upside was phenomenal. But still, the sport was virtually unknown in the Philippines, more so overseas.

"When the Philippine team would compete abroad, people would ask us ‘Philippines? Where’s that?’ and would assume we were no good, "del Rosario recalls. "So we would let our feet and our fists do the talking in the ring. To hear them look down at us and treat us like we were nothing, that gave us the drive to show them. In the end, they would tell us, ‘Hey, Philippine boy, you’re very good.’ And we passed this on to the younger black belts."

Eventually, del Rosario and his compatriots like Stephen Fernandez made it to the Olympics. They saw how huge taekwondo was on its home soil in Seoul, Korea, the dream to give our country its first Olympic gold grew. But there was always a stiff price to pay just for the chance.

"It’s double the pain," del Rosario admits. "In other sports, when you lose, you just say you lost. You‚’re still good-looking. In taekwondo, when you lose, you could get injured. I was knocked out four times, broke my nose twice and had my ribs cracked once. But it was worth it."

When Fernandez won the bronze, del Rosario was overjoyed for his friend. But, at the same time, time was starting to run out for him. His path was guided into a different direction: show business. He was advised that he could use his formidable skills to promote the sport, the same way international action stars like Sylvester Stallone, Steven Segal and Arnold Schwarzenegger had done for boxing, aikido and body building, respectively.

"I didn’t want to retire," he says emphatically. "Nobody could beat me! Couldn’t I just retire when somebody beat me? I was just 24, 25 years old. I could still compete for another five years. But they said I had done enough for the sport already."

So del Rosario took the advice, then realized he had walked into a cul-de-sac. Action stars wouldn’t let him share top billing, since they were, obviously, shorter, in poor shape, and not even as good-looking.

These days, del Rosario will be shooting for the "Panday" television series, as the mentor to Jericho Rosales’s lead character. It will, in a way, accomplish what he set out to do for the sport, bring it to the masses.

With Fernandez and a few friends, del Rosario set up Olympians Taekwondo Training Center in Makati. There, they spread the gospel of the sport.

Monsour also became what some of his other fellow retired athletes did: a brand name. PEAK martial arts equipment now produces the Monsour line of uniforms and equipment, for which Monsour is now reaping the rewards of building his name beginning more than 20 years ago. For those who are unfamiliar with the world of martial arts, it is a disorienting feeling to see the person you’re having a conversation with causing people to stop and bow to him, and bowing back. But such is the tradition in taekwondo, and Monsour still is one of the sport’s pillars. He has been name the ambassador for the sport, and even the world governing body, the WTF, has given him a citation in recognition for his immense contribution to the sport’s development. But the dream continues.

"My dream is still to see a Filipino win an Olympic gold medal, to get the medal that I did not get," he reveals, his eyes welling up with tears. "I hope that, in my lifetime, I still get to see that happen, and I still hope to train a Filipino to get that medal. For all of us, that’s the whole package."

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Catch The Basketball Show tonight at 8:30 p.m. on IBC-13, and a new all-sports show entitled Sports Xpress on Friday at the same time, also on IBC-13.