MERCITO GESTA WINS BY SHUTOUT OVER FAVILA
By Ronnie Nathanielsz
PhilBoxing.com
Sat, 27 Feb 2010
Promising Filipino lightweight Mercito Gesta has scored an eight round shutout over rugged Cristian Favila in a rematch at the Four Points Sheraton Hotel in San Diego, California.
The undefeated southpaw who upped his record to 17-0-1 with 7 knockouts had previously won a unanimous eight round decision over Favela in Tucson, Arizona on November 7, 2008 and has since then strung together a series of knockout victories including a 1st round TKO over touted Alain Hernandez at the Hard Rock Hotel in San Diego followed by 3rd round TKO over Devarise Crayton at the same venue on July 10, 2009.
While Favela who had previously lost an eight round decision to another Filipino southpaw Czar Amonsot has had a run of seven straight losses, all by unanimous decisions, the 30 year old is regarded as a tough opponent aside from the fact that Gesta had to shake off some ring rust according to his co-manager Vince Parra.
Parra, in an overseas telephone conversation with www.insidesports.ph, Standard Today and Viva Sports said Gesta “got eight rounds in and you know he hasn’t fought for six months and Favela is very tough.”
He said the fight was “almost stopped in the fourth round because Favela’s left eye was almost closed because of solid punches and Mercito was landing his right hook a lot.”
Parra said Gesta was “a little rusty and he tried for a knockout a little bit too hard. He really wanted to knock him out but you know sometimes he was head-hunting instead of going to the body enough, but it was good to knock the rust off.” Parra said Gesta won every round and all three judges scored it for the Filipino 80-72.
Parra said he would meet with Gesta’s promoter Don Chargin this week and indicated that he had already said “if Mercito comes out of this fight clean, no problems or anything we want to go within a month or sometimes towards the end of April and we are going to fight a ten-rounder against a top ten, top fifteen guy.”
Parra said he sat down with Penalosa and Gesta and talked about it and the fight against Favela was “just like a tune-up and it was good as he threw good punches, he had good defense, he didn’t get hit, no marks nothing and he got the rust off. Now hopefully we are going to fight a ten-rounder here against a top guy but they haven’t told us yet who he is.”
Gesta is trained by the elder brother of former two-division world champion Gerry Penalosa, Carl Penalosa. However, the elder Penalosa was concentrating on preparing Gerry for his WBO bantamweight title eliminator against former champion Eric Morel and is now preparing Gerry Penalosa’s prot?g? Michael Farenas for his next fight and couldn’t train Gesta but indicated he would be back in his training camp in preparation for Gesta’s next fight.
Parra conceded that the things that make Gesta “such a good fighter can work against him too because he’s a natural and had no amateur fights but he’s such a good athlete and it comes so easy to him that it could make him complacent and lazy. I think that’s what was a little bit of a problem in Los Angeles where he was a little bit complacent.”
Manny Pacquiao’s adviser Michael Koncz who signed up Gesta and took him to the US said Gesta didn’t concentrate while he was training at the Wild Card Gym and indicated he was pleased to learn that the promising Filipino had settled down and was going much better in San Diego.
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