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Ring Magazine Article: "The Filipinos are coming!"
THE FILIPINOS ARE COMING! THE FILIPINOS ARE COMING!
By William Dettloff
Daniel Ponce De Leon’s blowout of Rey Bautista notwithstanding, fighters from the Philippines are making a huge imprint on the boxing business in America. And I don’t mean because they took five out of six fights against the Mexicans in Golden Boy Promotions’ “World Cup” on Saturday night. It’s hard to find a bigger card anymore on which there aren’t at least a couple of hard-charging, bomb-throwing Filipinos wreaking all manner of havoc in important fights.
On last week’s David Diaz-Erik Morales card, Rodel Mayol came close to upsetting Ulises Solis. A couple of weeks earlier, Czar Amonsot made a mess of Michael Katisdis’ face before getting over-powered. The Filipinos are everywhere in boxing these days, and they can fight.
To whom do we owe this welcome development? Manny Pacquiao, of course. Pacquiao is such a huge star in the Philippines and, at the same time, such an everyman, that not only do all the young guys want to be like him, they believe they can be. So they pull on gloves over there, work their butts off in the gym and before you know it they’re over here ****ing on Freddie Roach’s door. Good for them.
There is precedent for this, of course. In the spring of 1922 the wonderful flyweight Pancho Villa (real name Francisco Guilledo) left Illoilo, Philippines for America and came under the direction of the famous promoter Tex Rickard. The following year he knocked out the great (and semi-retired) Jimmy Wilde in seven rounds to win the world title and made four defenses over the next two years. He died of an infection in July ’25 at the age of 24 following a tooth extraction, but he’d already opened the gates; Filipino fighters by the thousands flooded the big cities and left an indelible mark on the game. We’re seeing a similar phenomenon today.
That’s the way it works in boxing and probably in all sports. Naseem Hamed and Lennox Lewis drove British kids into the gyms 10 years ago and Joe Calzaghe and Ricky Hatton are doing it today. Julio Cesar Chavez is undeniably responsible for starting the careers of hundreds of young Mexican fighters. Muhammad Ali probably made more fighters than anyone in history. A generation after Ali made his mark, Sugar Ray Leonard was the impetus for countless young men to tie on gloves, and after him, Mike Tyson. Fighters don’t even have to be real to move the masses; I’ll bet Vinny Pazienza isn’t the only fighter from his generation to trace his beginning to Rocky Balboa.
It takes just a single star to move a generation. Just one. And sooner or later, he always arrives.
world cups phil-mexico the score is 5-1.philippines owned mexico!
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