Responsible Use of the Social Media in the Info-Education of the Filipino Boxing Fans
By Teodoro Medina Reynoso
PhilBoxing.com
Tue, 08 Mar 2022
After seeing fellow media friend Pow Salud apologised to his followers in his popular Powcast Sport YouTube blogsite for not completing his audio coverage of the recent Jerwin Ancajas title defense in Las Vegas as it was already a clear loss, I was prompted to search other blogsites into the fight for more information and confirmation.
I was surprised to stumble upon a particular blogsite which reported that Jerwin had won and by knockout still!
I did not bother to open the site as it, like some other blogs, that were purporting to report or give update on the fight are merely so called "click baits". Many in fact just featured Jerwin's past winning fights which they used to support their predictions or wishful thinking of his impending victory which proved very far from the actual, real outcome.
I was appalled by the realization that even sports, particularly boxing, has not been spared from improper and irresponsible use of social media through the production and circulation of fake news.
The best way to combat fake news is by arming and fortifying our people, in this case, boxing fans with accurate information and through proper education on the sport.
But I am afraid even in this aspect, a lot of grounds have to be covered.
Indicative of this is the fact that in many so called local boxing blog sites, fans were still expecting Ancajas to
win despite his not meeting the weight limit, some even looking for a beat down of his Argentine challenger.
And very recently, in a pre fight poll and in the posts during the fight in Pow Salud blogsite, more than 70 percent of the respondents and most of the posters predicted Jeo Santisima winning by knockout or on points over Joet Gonzalez.
Santisima lost by 9th round technical knockout to Gonzalez in a fight that was prematurely stopped by the referee but obviously he was losing big -- and brutally.
Based on their respective performance versus Emanuel Navarette, record, skillet and physical attributes, it was not hard to see Santisima was at a disadvantage vis a vis the Mexican American Gonzalez.
Bloggers in boxing some of whom are regarded as influencers and experts themselves in the sport, clearly need to do much more in properly informing and educating their mostly young followers who are either new boxing fans or converts or enthusiasts. They should not devote much of their time and content on merely entertaining and engaging them in trivia or wishful thinking.
As a sports, mainly boxing fan and follower and later student of the boxing history, I myself was drawn to the sport not just by the then boxing media experts of our time back in the 60s but also by the knowledgeable boxing fans one usually met in the barber shops, bantering around sari-sari stores or even at home like my father, uncles and older relatives who were animatedly talking about the exploits of top Filipino and foreign fighters with pertinent analyses and details to boot.
You see, boxing, as basketball, the top two sports those times were standard fares in many daily group gathering and actual, not virtual as today, group chats.
With boxing not as popular as before and besieged as it has been by other attention catching competitions especially in this digital technology age, I am quite certain that the boxing fans of today are less knowledgeable about the sport as compared to those of our time who were ironically dependent merely on reports from the so called tri-media- newspapers, television and radio especially transistor radios.
Boxing bloggers locally really need to come up with more useful and better than mere engaging content and reportage for the proper information and education of our Filipino boxing fans.
Still on this topic, I welcome and praise our authorities particularly the Games and Amusement Board under Chairman Abraham Khalil Mitra for cracking down on organizers of so called boxing bouts in YouTube. Boxing is such a serious and deadly sport to be placed at the hands of unscrupulous people out to make money by exploiting its entertainment value at the expense of the unwitting and the gullible.
The author Teodoro Medina Reynoso is a veteran boxing radio talk show host living in the Philippines. He can be reached at teddyreynoso@yahoo.com and by phone 09215309477.
Click here to view a list of other articles written by Teodoro Medina Reynoso.
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