Filipino Boxers Did Well in the Undercard of the De la Hoya vs. Mayweather Bout

Last Saturday night, May 5 we attended the birthday party of our friends Homer and Chit Freitag's twin daughters' birthday party. After that we continued to watch the HBO-PPV of 'The World Awaits' boxing match between de la Hoya and Mayweather at the MGM Grand of Las Vegas. Forget the main event, if it was not for de la Hoya's more aggressive stance, it was a pretty boring fight. Mayweather may be the pound for pound king, religiously maintaining his unbeaten record by avoiding the real contenders but his style of fighting is completely unexciting compared to Manny Pacquiao. It's time for Manny Pacquiao to take the throne although that's another story and a big question mark especially that's he's running for congressman.

Anyway, among the bouts on PPV, it was 20 year old Filipino boxer Rey 'Boom Boom' Bautista vs. Sergio Medina of Argentina who made the PPV worthwhile. Boom Boom was all heart, despite suffering a knockdown and standing 8-count in round 7, he managed to recover and maintain his aggressiveness. It was after all his toughest fight so far, fighting a 28-0 fighter (but not anymore). At the end, after knocking down Medina twice, he unanimously won the bout.
His record stands at 23-0.



Also in one of the undercards but not on PPV was another Filipino boxer by the name of AJ 'Bazooka' Banal who made the country proud. This was his US debut and according to the news he won convincingly over another tough Mexican by the name of Juan Alberto Rosas in another unanimous victory decision. He's only 18 years old but I've seen some of his fights on youtube.com and he's a very skilled boxer. At the moment, he is 13-0.

These two boxers are the cream of the crop right now of Philippine boxing, still maintaining their unbeaten records and hopefully in the near future will be world champions and keep their belts for a long time. They do deserve to reap the rewards of their hard work.