Nietes cements No. 1 fly status

LONGEST reigning Filipino world champion Donnie “Ahas” Nietes, who scored a unanimous victory against Mexican Edgar Sosa in California over the weekend, cemented his position as the No. 1 contender for the vacant WBO flyweight title.

Days before Nietes’ fight with Sosa for the WBO Inter-continental flyweight championship at StubHub Center in Carson, Juan Franciso Estrada of Mexico relinquished his WBO flyweight title to pursue a more lucrative fight with top pound-for-pound fighter Roman “Chocolatito” Gonzalez of Nicaragua in the 115-pound division.

Chinese Olympic gold medalist Zou Shiming is the current WBO No. 2 and Thai boxer Kwanpichit Onesongchaigym is No. 3.

They will clash in a rematch in the undercard of the Manny Pacquiao-Jesse Vargas title fight in November in Las Vegas.

The winner in the eliminator will fight Nietes for the vacant WBO flyweight belt.

Nietes was the superior fighter against Sosa who, at 37, was obviously past his prime. The former Mexican light flyweight champion failed to win a single round in the scheduled 12-round bout.

The former 104 lb and 108 lb title holder dominated the fight and had opportunities to finish off Sosa.

Some boxing analysts questioned Nietes’ punching power and his ability to stay in the flyweight division. He peppered Sosa with all kinds of punches but failed to get him down.

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The Philippine Basketball Association (PBA) has some issues to resolve with the Samahang Basketbol ng Pilipinas (SBP) in choosing the best players for the Gilas team in connection with the new Fiba competition format for the 2019 World Cup in China and 2020 Olympics in Tokyo.

Fiba’s new format calls for six home-and-away competitions in different parts of the globe over a two-year period for the country to qualify for the World Cup and the Olympics.

With regard to recruiting players, the PBA and SBP are choosing between a common draft and a split draft.

PBA commissioner Chito Narvasa favors the common draft. In a split draft, players in the national pool will be selected separately from the others.

What is questionable in the split draft is that Gilas players can rejoin their mother teams in the PBA only after their release from the Philippine team.

This may be a disadvantage to the PBA teams because there are six home-and–away qualifiers for the World Cup that will tremendously affect their campaign, especially in import-less conferences.

The scheduled home-and-away windows will be on November 2017, February, June, September and November 2018 and February 2019.