By Ryan Maquiñana
Lightweight contender Mercito Gesta will throw out the first pitch at San Diego’s Petco Park as the guest of honor for the Padres’ Filipino Cultural Night on Sept. 3.
“I’m excited to throw out the first pitch because there will be a lot of Filipinos there, but I need to practice. I think I’m going to throw a curveball,” Gesta joked.
Gesta (22-0-1, 12 KOs), a San Diego resident via Cebu, Philippines, will then watch the Padres play the visiting Colorado Rockies.
“We do a lot of work in the Filipino community and the Padres P.R. department called us asking if he would be interested,” Gesta’s trainer/manager, Vince Parra, said.
Off the mound, Gesta plans to start training on Monday for his Sept. 17 Top Rank Live main event. He faces an opponent yet to be determined at the BlueWater Casino in Parker, Ariz.
Parra set the blueprint for the rest of the year.
“Mercito is more than interested in challenging Vasquez in December,” Parra said. “He’s the most avoided guy at 135 [pounds], and Mercito has let Bob know that he’s more than willing to fight him. If Brandon Rios is still available after that, then we’d love to do that fight down the line, especially since then we’d have a belt, too.”
Ryan Maquiñana is the boxing correspondent at Comcast SportsNet Bay Area and a member of the Boxing Writers Association of America. E-mail him at rmaquinana@gmail.com, check out his blog at www.maqdown.com or follow him on Twitter: @RMaq28.