Marcial, Ancajas fly back home unannounced

TOKYO Olympics-bound Eumir Felix Marcial flew back home unannounced with world champion Jerwin Ancajas on Tuesday morning, wrapping up a six-month training at the world renowned Wild Card Gym in Los Angeles.

The 25-year-old Marcial didn’t reply to messages nor answer calls, but MP Promotions President Sean Gibbons told Businessmirror that he wanted to visit his sick father Eulalio in his native Barangay Lunzuran in Zamboanga City.

Besides International Boxing Federation super flyweight world titleholder Ancajas, also flying back home via a Philippine Airlines flight was Marcial’s sparring partner Jonas Sultan and Ancajas’s trainer and manager Joven Jimenez.

The group headed straight to the Marine Base in Ternate, Cavite, for a mandatory quarantine.

Jimenez said Marcial will continue to train in the country but didn’t discount the possibility that the Olympic gold medal prospect would still return to the Wild Card Gym where he trained for six months since last October and figured in a successful professional debut in Los Angeles, beating American Andrew Whitfield via unanimous decision last December 16.

Marcial is also programmed to join his fellow national boxers and Olympic qualifiers Nesthy Petecio, Irish Magno and Carlo Paalam in the Asian Elite Men and Women Boxing Championships from May 21 to 31 in New Delhi.

Association of Boxing Alliances in the Philippines (ABAP) secretary general Ed Picson, however, said the India stint could be scratched because of the enormous Covid-19 cases in the country.

“We are still monitoring the situation in India, but we haven’t received any notice yet [from the organizers], so the tournament is still on,” Picson said.