GenSan Is Our Version of Los Mochis - The City of Boxing Champions
By Teodoro Medina Reynoso
PhilBoxing.com
Fri, 05 Sep 2025
Mexico's greatest fighters and champions come from various cities and states across the country. Julio César Chávez Sr., for example, is from Ciudad Obregón in Sonora, while Canelo Álvarez and Marco Antonio Barrera hail from Guadalajara, Jalisco. However, the city generally regarded as the "Ciudad de Campeones" or "City of Champions" is Los Mochis in Sinaloa, which recently added new IBF super featherweight titlist Eduardo Nuñez to its list of world champions.
The primary reason for this distinction is that it's a common sight to see current and former world boxing champions walking and interacting with people in the streets of Los Mochis. Unlike other successful Mexican fighters who moved to major cities in and outside of Mexico, natives who became world champions chose to stay in Los Mochis. Other world champions or at least world-title contenders from the city include Fernando Montiel, Jorge Arce, Humberto Soto, Ray and Fernando Beltrán, and Jesús Soto Karass, among others.
This raises the question: Do we have our own version of Los Mochis, the "Cuna de Campeones Mundiales" or "Cradle of World Champions"?
It's time to name one of our own as a legacy to the sport and as an added tourism attraction. It's difficult at first to pinpoint one, as many of our past and present world boxing champions come from different places.
Our first world champion, Pancho Villa (Francisco Guilledo), was born in Ilog, Negros Occidental—a province that also produced fighters like Eleuterio Zapata (also known as "Little Dado" from La Carlota), Gerry Peñalosa, and Donnie Nietes (both from Bacolod). Cebu has also spawned many champions, the most famous of whom was Gabriel "Flash" Elorde from Bogo, who held the world junior lightweight championship for a record seven years. Elorde is also the first Filipino and Asian fighter to be enshrined in the International Boxing Hall of Fame.
However, no specific city in either Western or Central Visayas—acknowledged hubs of Filipino boxing talent—can singularly qualify as our own version of Los Mochis. There can be strong arguments, though, for Ilog, Negros Occidental, and the province itself, as well as Bogo City and the province of Cebu, for the distinction as the Cradle of Filipino World Boxing Champions.
Moving farther south to Mindanao, however, there is one city that can very well be our Los Mochis, the City of World Champions. It is none other than General Santos City, also affectionately called "GenSan," a highly urbanized city in the SOCCSKSARGEN region in Southern Mindanao.
GenSan, known as the "Tuna Capital of the Philippines," gained further national and global fame because of the boxing exploits of Manny Pacquiao and Nonito Donaire.
Pacquiao is the only boxer to win world championships in a record eight weight divisions. He has returned to boxing after four years of semi-retirement and is training for an unprecedented fourth tenure as a welterweight titleholder at age 46.
Donaire has won world championships in four weight classes and is currently on a fourth title term at bantamweight after copping world crowns at flyweight, super bantamweight, and featherweight.
The first world champion to put GenSan in the global boxing consciousness was Rolando Navarrete, who won the WBC super featherweight title by knocking out Ugandan Cornelius Boza Edwards in Italy in 1981 and had a colorful though rocky career from the mid-'70s through much of the '80s. Another prominent GenSan world boxing titleholder is Marvin Sonsona, who won major belts in two weight divisions in the 2010s.
Though both Pacquiao and Donaire started their boxing careers in Metro Manila and the USA, respectively, they still call GenSan home. The people in the city are extremely proud of them and always regard them as their own.
Given these facts, there is no doubt that GenSan is deservedly our own version of Mexico's Los Mochis, "Ciudad de Campeones."
I hope the GenSan city government will make the official move.
If it hasn't already.
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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