What was that again? All you need to hit the jackpot is one ticket? Well that may work in lottery, even against million-to-one odds. But in sports? Even with a generous financial backer helping tilt supposedly better odds toward you? I’m not quite sure. I’m not discounting come-from-behind dramas or fairy-tale endings but from where [...]
It was October last year then when the Energen Team Pilipinas joined the Fédération Internationale de Basketball Under-16 tournament and stepped into the limelight.
We are used to cheering our hearts out for our favorite teams, scream boo’s at our bitter rivals, celebrate whenever we reach victories and mourn with the teams in heartbreaking losses.
There was a tangible sense of easy optimism as pizza slices, glasses of Coke and good-natured trash-talking were being passed around by some of the biggest names of today’s football scene.
Strange as this may sound, Brian Viloria will enter the ring an underdog against Giovani Segura—even if the Filipino-American is the one who will be defending a title.
It’s only been just a year when Philippine football took a one-eighty from being one of the most unnoticed and unappreciated sports in the country to being the most watched and most followed.
This whirlwind rise of the sport took a step further when North American major league football team LA Galaxy visited Manila recently as part of its Asia-Pacific promotional tour. The team, which was led by no other than English football superstar David Beckham and the US national football team’s former captain Landon Donovan, went against our very own Philippine Azkals in a friendly match dubbed as the Dream Cup.
The Azkals may have trailed behind with a final score of 6-1 in favor of the LA Galaxy but nonetheless, with major league football players taking on our own footballers on Philippine soil, it was undeniably a good day for Philippine football once again.
MANILA, Philippines—Many of the great boxers of this generation dream to fight Manny Pacquiao. A fight with Pacquiao represents many things. A big paycheck, bragging rights, championship belts are just some of the more obvious reasons. None, however, would have the same reason as a fighter named Juan Manuel Marquez. Although Marquez’s reason is clearly [...]
Nonito Donaire is back in town following his uneventful conquest of the reluctant Argentine challenger Omar Narvaez in New York last week. Network giant ABS-CBN wasted no time in parading the pound-for-pound prince on national TV. He appeared in “Showtime” (where so-so judges judge talent) and the unimaginatively titled noontime show “Happy, Yippee, Yehey.” The [...]
NEW YORK CITY – Lost amid the hype and hoopla of Nonito Donaire Jr.’s bout against Omar Narvaez, and the subsequent disappointment that followed the Filipino Flash’s victory was one question begging an answer: Has Nonito Donaire made a Faustian bargain? There was that brief buzz around the Big Apple when the Filipino Flash showed [...]
NEW YORK CITY – For somebody criticized for not picking up someone his own size, it’s shocking to know that Nonito Donaire Jr. was bullied as a kid, to the point of near-suicide. He dropped that bombshell during a courtesy call to consul general Mario de Leon Jr., at the Philippine consulate here Wednesday. “I [...]
If it wasn’t for the NBA lockout, this tweet from Miami Heat star LeBron James to me—yes, to me-—which caused quite a stir in Twitterverse’s basketball corner wouldn’t have happened. Lebron James—seemingly bored while waiting for the Liverpool-Manchester United match—was taking questions from his fans on Twitter last Saturday. And again, if it wasn’t for [...]
He wants to be a part of it. That’s for sure. And what a better way to do it for Nonito Donaire Jr., but in New York City. On Oct. 22 he gets to live out all the cliches attached to the Big Apple when he takes a big bite out of it. He is [...]
The search for heroes and villains in the looming B-Meg-Alaska battle snaked through airport roads and crawled past religious processions before finally landing within arms length of an iconic basketball coach Saturday evening. “For sure, there’ll be a lot of sympathy for Fred [Uytengsu, Alaska owner],” said the coach, who has enough insight into the [...]
