MARCIAL SKIPS SEAG, TOO
EUMIR FELIX MARCIAL won’t be in Cambodia thus foregoing the chance for a fifth straight men’s boxing gold medal in the Southeast Asian Games. “I’m not going to fight in the SEA Games,” the 27-year-old Tokyo Olympics bronze medalist told Businessmirror via text message on Thursday, four days after going 4-0 as a pro with a second-round technical knockout win over Argentina’s Ricardo Ruben Villalba in San Antonio, Texas.
“My next fight as a pro will be most likely late May or June, so I really need be in the US to train,” added Marcial, who’s expected to return home with wife Princess for a two-week vacation. He’s been in the US since October.
His handler, MP Promotions head Sean Gibbons, confirmed his decision.
“Eumir can dominate the Southeast Asian Games even while sitting on a couch,” Gibbons said.
Marcial took Olympic weightlifting champion Hidilyn Diaz-naranjo’s decision to also skip the 32nd SEA Games Cambodia is hosting from May 5 to 17.
Diaz-naranja and her husband-coach Julius Naranjo are focused on a fifth Olympic campaign and are putting more weight on the Asian Weightlifting Championships—a Paris 2024 qualifier—that runs conflict with the SEA Games with a May 3 to 13 program.
That leaves two potential repeat gold medalists on Team Philippines in Cambodia—world No. 3 pole vaulter who’s expecting to kick off his outdoor campaign in the SEA Games and two-time world gymnastics champion Carlos Yulo.
Yulo, however, declared he’ll skip the Asian Games in Hangzhou whose September 23-October 8 schedule runs against the Olympic qualifier World Artistic Gymnastics Championships from September 29 to October 8 in Antwerp, Belgium. Marcial was a skinny flyweight when he broke into the boxing scene in 2011 by winning his first international gold medal at the Youth World Championships in Astana, Kazakhstan. He debuted at the Singapore 2015 SEA Games and won gold as a welterweight. He bulked up to middleweight and dominated the division in the next three editions of the Games—kuala Lumpur 2017, Philippines 2019 and Hanoi 2022. He qualified for Tokyo when he won gold at the 2020 Asia Oceania Boxing Olympics Qualification Tournament in Amman, Jordan, and settled for bronze at the Olympics in 2021. He vowed to win an Olympic gold besides his dream to become a world champion in the pros.