Pancho Villa lived a fast and brief life (Fourth of a Series)
By Eddie Alinea
PhilBoxing.com
Thu, 24 Jun 2010
Two months after disposing off George Mendies, the so-called greatest flyweight Australia had produced then via a third round stoppage, Pancho Villa returned to Negros for the first time since stowing away.
He went back and forth from La Carlota to Iloilo doing exhibition fights with local pugs before his foster father Paquito villa suddenly surface to show him an invitation fro American promoter Tex Richard for him to go to the United States and try his luck in the land of sweet and honey.
And on March 5, 1922, Pancho and Paquito shipped back to Manila to prepare for their departure on April 2. Before he left though for the U.S. Pancho he disappeared briefly only to be back to his camp with Gliceria whom he had eloped and had a three-day honeymoon.
Pancho and his team, that included Paquito Villa,promoter Richard Churchill and featherweight stablemate Elino Fores landed in New York in May 1922.
In less than a year he fought no less than a dozen, winning the American flyweight crown at the expense of Johnny Buff, outpointing Abe Goldstein, who 16 months later won the world bantamweight championship, Young Montreal and Terry Martin, knocked out Frankie Mason and Kid Wolfe. In n between those fights had a trilogy with legendary Frankie Genaro ? feats that earned for him a crack at the world title held by Jimmy Wilde of Wales.
Wilde a 31-year-old from Tylerstown was the 112-pound kingpin since 1916 and owned an 11-0 victory since landing in the American soil in 1921. He drifted away from the ring and was believed to have retired until he was tempted back by a huge $65,000 encounter with Pancho at New York?s Polo Grounds.
The Filipino knocked the Welshman in the seventh round of a 15-round bout becoming the First from hos country and Asia to bring home a world championship. Two years later, he was dead 18 days before his 24th birthday.
Pancho was enshrined at the Ring Magazine?s Hall of Fame in October 1961, was named by the Associated Press ad the ?Greatest Flyweight of the Century? and elevated to the local Hall of Fame only last May.
Pancho lived a fast and brief life of only less than two and a half decades. What made him great besides the power in his fists and his pair of strong legs was his pride in known as a Filipino. The Philippines being under a Commonwealth government was practically under the American rule. Reason why the American took him as their own.
Former Games and Amusements chair Dominador Cepeda Jr., recalling what his father, baseball great Domindor Cepeda Sr., often told him, Panho always went to public functions with a retinue of aides. One was to remove his hat and comb his hair.
One was to remove his coat, while still another to polish his shoes that, naturally caught attention of everyone and led them to ask who he was.
To which one of his aides would readily retort: He is Pancho Villa, the flyweight champion of the world from the Philippines.?
Pancho was a generous fellow. He spent money as fast as he earned it. He once gave a girl a coat worth $3,000, purchased suits worth $200 each at Fifth Avenue. He bought a $10,000 custom-built Lincoln. He tipped waiters and musicians $20 bills while dating Miss New York of 1923 regularly.
He frequented the race track with heavyweight champion Jack Dempsey, a close friend, and lost as much as $17,000 on a horse owned by the latter.
(Eddie G. Alinea is the sports editor of sportsmanila.net)
Click here to view a list of other articles written by Eddie Alinea.
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