WHAT?S IN A NAME? EVERYTHING!
By Ronnie Nathanielsz
PhilBoxing.com
Mon, 22 Apr 2013
During our pre-production meeting in preparation for the ABS-CBN coverage of ?Pinoy Pride XIX? at the Southeastern Philippines Gym in Davao City on Saturday, we took a stand that although the official program stated that Marco Singwancha was the challenger to OPBF super flyweight champion Arthur Villanueva we would only refer to him by his real name ? Marco Demecillo, a fighter of Rex ?Wakee? Salud who allegedly agreed to tag on the Singwancha name for a price.
Kabalarian Philosophy states that ?the power of a name and its value has long been immortalized in prose, poetry and religious ceremony. Everyone recognizes himself or herself by name.?
More and more we have read and heard of Filipino boxers carrying the name of the Thai boxing patron whose claim to fame is that he?s generous and is prepared to pay a good price just to have his name tagged on to a promising Filipino boxer.
As ring announcer Ted Lerner recalled, during the recent Gabriel ?Flash? Elorde Annual Awards dinner, he was struck by the fact that every other fighter was a Singwancha.
In fact when GAB chairman Monchu Guanzon approached us prior to the start of our coverage last Saturday we vented our ire over what we felt was nothing short of an act of desecration where a boxer?s family name in an OPBF title fight was substituted by the name Singwancha.
To Filipinos, like other peoples with a sense of history and heritage, their family names are precious and not to be trifled with. That is why Filipino couples, fathers in particular, always look to have a son so their family name could be carried from one generation to another.
Bothered by reports that Singwanchas were crawling out of the woodwork in Philippine boxing we decided to check on the latest ratings of the Games and Amusements Board.
Lo and behold there were no less than two champions and 10 rated fighters named Singwancha with 5 Singwanchas rated in the light flyweight division.
Why and how the GAB boxing division headed by Dr. Nasser Cruz allowed this travesty to take place we could never fathom although we certainly have our suspicions.
Since chairman Guanzon appears to be overly concerned about what President ?NoyNoy? Aquino thinks about the agency directly under the Office of the President which fact was proudly displayed in the GAB seal tagged on to the weighing scale for ?Pinoy Pride XIX?, we wonder how Malacanang would react when in an all-Filipino showdown for the OPBF super flyweight title one of the fighters was called to the scales under the name Marco Singwancha!
This type of shenanigan certainly doesn?t trudge the straight path so often espoused by President Aquino. Indeed, it signifies, at the very least, a lack of integrity which we have consistently defined as the quality of wholeness.
What is worse, we?ve been told that while the managers of the boxers who carry the name Singwancha get rewarded for their acquiescence, the fighters themselves don?t benefit at all unless they win and Naris Singwancha pulls out some dollars from what appears to be deep pockets and rewards them for their effort.
Chairman Guanzon and his officials have instituted some ridiculous rules that seek to prevent fighters from being badly injured or God forbid, adding to the number of ring deaths.
To us, substituting a fighter?s family name with that of someone else ? Singwancha to be specific ? is worse than death because a family name in many respects is sacred and means everything.
Photo: Boxing patron Naris Singwancha (L) raises the hand of Marco Demecillo after Demecillo's win against Ricardo Roa in Dalaguete, Cebu on Feb. 6, 2011. Photo by Dong Secuya.
Click here to view a list of other articles written by Ronnie Nathanielsz.
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