SPORTS RECORDS 7: GABRIEL "FLASH" ELORDE, THE LONGEST REIGN AS SUPER FEATHERWEIGHT CHAMPION
By Maloney L. Samaco
PhilBoxing.com
Wed, 08 Jan 2025
Gabriel "Flash" Elorde won the lineal super featherweight title in 1960. In 1963, he won the inaugural WBC and WBA super featherweight titles. He holds the record at the super featherweight division as the longest reigning champion for seven years. Elorde is considered one of the best Filipino boxers of all time being the first Filipino international boxing champion since middleweight champion Ceferino Garcia.
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He won the world super featherweight title on March 16, 1960, by knocking out the defending world champion Harold Gomes in the seventh round. Elorde ended the country's 20-year drought without a world champion. An estimated crowd of 30,000, inside the newly built Araneta Coliseum, rushed into the ring after Gomes was not able to get up on his knees at the one-minute-50-second mark of the seventh round. The championship moment occurred two decades after countryman Ceferino Garcia, known as the father of the "bolo punch'", lost the middleweight title he held until 1940.
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Elorde defended the title 10 times against Gomes, Joey Lopes, Sergio Caprari, Auburn Copeland, Terou Kosaka (twice), Johnny Bizzaro, Kang-Il Suh, Vicente Milan Derado, Love Allotey until June 15, 1967, where he lost a majority decision to Yoshiaki Numata of Japan. The successful defenses made him the longest-reigning world junior lightweight champion ever. He reigned for seven years and three months.
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Elorde retired with a record of 88 wins (33 KOs), 27 losses and 2 draws. He is widely considered as the greatest super featherweight champion of all time in WBC history. In 1993, he became the first Asian inducted into the New York-based International Boxing Hall of Fame. He was also enshrined into the World Boxing Hall of Fame. Elorde was also listed as the 78th best fighter by the Ring Magazine in 2002 in its 80 Best Fighters of the Last 80 Years.
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Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, born Ferdinand Lewis Alcindor Jr. played professional basketball for 20 seasons for the Milwaukee Bucks and Los Angeles Lakers in the National Basketball Association (NBA), and played college basketball for the UCLA Bruins as center. Abdul-Jabbar won a record six NBA Most Valuable Player (MVP) awards. He was a 19-time NBA All-Star, a 15-time All-NBA Team member, and an 11-time NBA All-Defensive Team member. He was a member of six NBA championship teams as a player and another two titles as an assistant coach, and was twice selected as an NBA Finals MVP.
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Andul-Jabbar was named to three NBA anniversary teams, the 35th, 50th, and 75th. He has been regarded as the greatest basketball player of all time by many of his contemporaries such as Pat Riley, Isiah Thomas, and Julius Erving. Abdul-Jabbar topped the NBA's career scoring record in 1984, and was number one until LeBron James surpassed him in 2023.
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