Apolinario Beats Vicente Palicte, Wins WBO's Oriental Title
by Ronnie Nathanielsz
In a battle of two young and promising fighters Mark John Apolinario, throwing rapid-fire combinations and moving swiftly out-boxed Vicente Palicte who looked for one big shot all night long but couldn’t connect to win a unanimous twelve round decision to capture the vacant WBO Oriental super flyweight championship at the Arayata Sports Center in Tanza, Cavite.
All three judges, Salven Lagumbay, Romy Yulo and Manny Mananquil turned in identical scorecards of 116-112 which is also the way BoxingScene.com/Inquirer unofficially scored the fight, 8 rounds to 4 in favor of Apolinario.
After sizing up his opponent in the early rounds and staying away from the powerful right of Palicte, a natural bantamweight who dropped down in order to get a crack at the title, Apolinario used his advantage in speed to often connect with four and five punch combinations, switching from the body to the head while Palicte often connected with one good shot but failed to follow-up allowing Apolinario to effectively dictate the tempo of the fight.
While Palicte began to get frustrated by the ability of Apolinario to slip his punches and even on occasions connected with low blows more out of frustration than any deliberate intent, the fighter from the stable of Dr. Rajan Yraola under solid trainer Jun Agrabio kept to their game-plan while his three months of preparation paid off handsomely saying he could have gone 14 rounds if needed.
WBO vice president for the Asia Pacific region Leon Panoncillo and promoter Sammy Gello-ani told the Inquirer that Apolinario will be included in the WBO world ratings next month which would serve as a stepping stone to bigger fights in the future.
In a supporting bout that on paper looked like a terrible mismatch but didn’t quite turn out that way, Indonesia’s Daud Yordan scored a knockoutat 2:32 of the 6th round against Christian Avila, nailing the lanky Filipino with solid left straights and a hard lefts and rights to the body that took the wind out of the Filipino.
However Avila (5-2-3, 0 KO’s) used his height and reach advantage to good measure to often clip Yordan with nifty straight lefts and rights to the delight of the fans but his punches had no sting and before long the Indon with a record of just one loss against 25 wins and 19 knockouts hammered the game Avila into submission.