MEMORIES OF ZANZIBAR AND ?EL TORITO?
By Rene Bonsubre, Jr.
PhilBoxing.com
Mon, 27 Aug 2012
I was walking on a pristine white sand beach in Zanzibar when AJ ?Bazooka? Banal lost to Rafael ?El Torito? Concepcion. That spared me from all the anguish and cynicism that reverberated throughout Cebu and the rest of the country.
I was less than three months away from finishing my two-year stint as a volunteer physician in Tanzania. But the stress of treating AIDS patients already got to me a long time ago. My friends kept telling me to take another break. One morning I looked in the mirror and saw an unshaved face with huge eyebags and disheveled hair and decided that they were right. Unguja, the main island of the Zanzibar archipelago, just off the coast of the Tanzanian mainland, provided a welcome diversion.
I was not alone at the beach. My friends from the Filipino community - overseas workers who have lived in East Africa for years - provided the much needed singing and laughter.
?Do you think Banal will win?? There were boxing fans among them.
?Yes. ? I replied. ?We will have a new champion a few hours from now. We?ll go online later and check the result.?
Zanzibar time was five hours behind the Philippines.
After feasting on seafood, I decided to take a walk. The soothing sound of the waves cleared my thoughts. I thought about the life I left behind in Cebu; imagining that I was at ringside at the Cebu Coliseum. I continued to walk until there was no other human being in sight. I basked in the isolation, picked a shady spot and dozed off on the fine white sand.
I woke up at dusk just in time before my friends decided to leave. We drove around Zanzibar before finishing the evening with more greasy Pinoy food and karaoke. Our host ? who had internet connection ?went online.
Our jaws dropped.
?Banal lost?!?
The ending seemed unbelievable at that time. Banal collapsed after building a huge lead. We were grasping for answers. It was not supposed to happen but it did. But the distance from home softened the impact and the party continued.
Days later I would read internet articles with all sorts of explanations about what happened. Everyone is wiser after the fact. The fans? comments were more vicious.
But, I still had other things to worry about. I had to go back to the Tanzanian mainland. There are things more important than sports.
Three months after I returned to the Philippines, I finally got a chance to talk to Banal. I looked at him with a fresh pair of eyes during a press conference for his first fight since the Concepcion debacle.
?If the fight was not held here in Cebu, would the result have been different? Did you feel so much pressure fighting in front of your relatives and friends?? I asked him.
Banal winced for a second and looked down on the floor before he answered my question. ?No, I did not feel that kind of pressure at all that night.?
I could tell he was not thoroughly honest with me. He had the look of someone who just wanted to forget about the whole thing and wished the press conference was over. But he had to answer more questions. I decided to take a step back and let him figure things out for himself. He demolished Nouldy Manakane but it did little to silence his critics. In the next three years and a half years Cebu sportswriters would continue to question him about his endurance and mental preparation.
Carlos Costa, who is now the Asia editor of notifight.com, was in Concepcion?s corner during that fateful night.
?El Torito was very calm. He even slept hours before the fight. I had to wake him up and told him the van from ALA was there to fetch him and that he was supposed to be fighting.? Costa recalled.
?I thought Concepcion would lose. Banal was beating him up but suddenly ran out of gas. We were lucky.? Costa said about his countryman?s victory.
?El Torito is now retired.? Costa added, ?The rematch will never happen.?
Concepcion went through losses against heavy hitters like Jorge Arce, Nonito Donaire and Fernando Montiel after beating Banal. Those fights eventually took their toll.
Banal will get a second chance. He will meet Thailand?s Pungluang Sor Singyu today and together they will promote their October 20 battle for the vacant WBO world bantamweight title. They will have more than eight weeks to prepare for the biggest fight of their lives.
Banal has been stung by the derisive comments from the fans. Many forget that he was still a teenager during his rise to the top until he tasted his lone defeat. Last month, he talked about learning to relax before a fight, how he has learned to master his tension. He will have to do more than that. His trainers and conditioning coach can only do so much. He will have to discover the intangibles on his own.
Maybe a quite walk on an isolated beach will do wonders for him.
(Top Photo ? a remote beach in Zanzibar, Below ? Rafael ?El Torito? Concepcion exults after sending AJ Banal to the canvas)
Click here to view a list of other articles written by Rene Bonsubre, Jr..
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