Changing PHL boxing mindset

Milan Melindo hasn’t even warmed his seat as the new IBF junior flyweight champion and in comes a challenge from Randy Petalcorin for a title fight. Filipino vs. Filipino for the world title. Something that, based on reports, hasn’t happened in over 70 years.

It’s one of the ideas that my friend and boxing writer par excellence Ryan Songalia is espousing. And I do happen to agree with him, it’s time to match up our best Pinoy fighters against each other.

Would it be happening soon? I don’t think so. Take the case of Melindo, he went through hell and back to get to where he is now and he’s in a damned if he do, damned if he don’t situation. Everyone would be saying that he’s chickening out if he won’t face Petalcorin, and if he does face a fellow Filipino, would he get the same amount of money and exposure if say, he fights abroad against a fellow champion?

It’s going to be hard to let a reigning world champion from the Philippines defend his belt against a fellow Pinoy, because aside from having a few world champions, do we have a category where the reigning world champion is a Filipino and the next two-ranked fighters are also from the Philippines? (That’s not rhetorical, I do want to know.)

If we can’t get that Pinoy vs. Pinoy title fight, then why not do the next best thing and match up our up and coming fighters-of which we have many--against each other? We can have it stable against stable and I think that would really drum up interest.

In Cebu, we can have the best of ALA stable against the best of Omega and to headline the card, we could have Jhack Tepora taking on Jeo Santisima. Both, curiously, have fights one day apart in July against a Mexican for Tepora and an African for Santisima.

I think a Tepora vs. Santisima bout--provided, of course, they win their July fights--is a bout that will sell itself in the local market. But the problem, of course, is would Tepora or Santisima agree to it? Or, for that matter, would their handlers agree to it?

Both fighters will say I’ll fight anyone the management tells me to fight, so I guess this is a matter of having management agree on something.

Management develop their fighters slowly, at their expense, to earn that oftenly-abused word “prospect,” and would they risk all of that against a fellow Pinoy? That’s one of the reasons we rarely see Pinoy fighters at the level of Tepora taking on each other.

But don’t you think it’s time we should change that? Test the waters so to speak. If it’s not as interesting as it’s touted to be, then no harm done, let’s go back to regular programming.

But if it’s a big hit, don’t you think it’s time we change this whole mindset regarding Filipino boxing?