A few hours from now, the entire Filipino people will once again witness another exciting boxing match featuring our favorite and own boxing champion Manny Pacquiao for his much-awaited return bout against Mexican champion Juan Manuel Marquez.
But before that momentous event, there is that imperative need for all of us Filipinos to give a fitting tribute to the late Gabriel “Flash” Elorde who, aside from Pacquiao, is considered one of the “greatest Filipino boxers of all time.”
For exactly 48 years ago, on March 16, 1960, Elorde brought fame and honor to our country when he knocked out then defending champion Harold Gomes of the United States and won the world junior lightweight (now super featherweight) championship trophy. The knockout came in the seventh round of a scheduled 15-round match held at the Araneta Coliseum on the occasion of its inauguration when the general admission was priced at eighty centavos only.
As I pay tribute and salute Elorde on this very memorable occasion, I once again take a look at my scrap book containing voluminous newspaper and magazine clippings on Elorde’s life and fights which I collected and kept when I was barely 13 years old and a second year high school at the Far Eastern University. One of those clippings was an article of Mr. Filemon Tutay of the Philippine Free Press dated March 26, 1960.
In that article Mr. Tutay vividly described how Elorde was so overcome with emotion when his left hand was raised immediately after that dramatic knockout victory. Tutay said that “the former bootblack was so overcome with emotion that he sank to his knees right in the middle of the ring and burst into tears. But nobody could blame the new Filipino world champion for, to him, it marked the realization of his ambition in life – to win a world boxing title for the Philippines.”
And so it was that the realization of that dream to put our country in the sports limelight in the entire world came after one minute and fifty seconds of that championship match against Harold Gomes. Elorde’s victory was made more impressive and convincing when he knocked down Gomes for seven times –almost successively in the second, third, fifth and seventh rounds – before that eventful knockout in the seventh round.
Elorde’s triumph was recognized by no less than the dethroned champ, Harold Gomes, himself. Mr. Tito Tagle in his December 29, 1999 article in The Philippine STAR recalled that “on the night of March 16, 1960 Gomes had gone to Elorde’s dressing room after their fight to present a pair of the 6-oz. gloves Gomes wore on that fight. It was the old king’s way of paying homage to the new king.” This pair of gloves is still prominently displayed in Elorde’s tropy room in his sprawling ranch-style home in Sucat, Parañaque.
For that fight Elorde earned P15,000 as against Gomes’ P25,000 guaranteed purse. Indeed, a far cry from the hundreds of millions earned by Pacquiao in his past and forthcoming fights.
Elorde reigned as world champion in that division for seven years, aside from having also won the Orient Lightweight championship. Thus, for his outstanding record as a ring fighter with 117 fights winning 88 with 33 knockouts, 27 losses and 2 draws, he was named as the “greatest world junior lightweight boxing champion in the history of the World Boxing Council in 1974.”
On January 2, 1985, he died of cancer at an early age of 49.
After his death, Elorde became the “first Asian inducted in the New York-based International Boxing Hall of Fame and enshrined into the World Boxing Hall of Fame.”
And so before Recah Trinidad complains that “it’s late again”, as he did in his March 18, 2002 column in another newspaper, let us all raise our glasses (before Manny Pacquiao enters into the ring to fight Marquez), to toast and recall that grand moment in Philippine sports on March 16, 1960 as we salute and pay tribute to Gabriel “Flash” Elorde for his humility, courage, skill and power that brought honor and fame to our country.