Work doesn’t stop for Jerwin Ancajas despite postponed fight
FILE –Filipino boxer Jerwin Ancajas. AFP FILE PHOTO
MANILA, Philippines—The biggest fight of his career may have been put on hold but Jerwin Ancajas is still putting in the work.
Ancajas was supposed to take on Kazuto Ioka to unify his IBF super flyweight title with the Japanese star’s WBO championship but their New Year’s eve fight got postponed after Japan closed its borders due to the Omicron COVID-19 variant.
Nevertheless, Ancajas continues to train as he prepares for the fight that he hopes will eventually get a date.
“We were actually in the middle of training when sir Sean [Gibbons, MP Promotions president] told us that the fight was postponed because Japan was put in lockdown again,” said Ancajas in Filipino. “I can’t do anything about it so I just went back to training.”
Ancajas, who’s living in Los Angeles to prepare for the bout, still trains from Monday to Saturday and he only took a break on December 11 to get his booster shot for his COVID-19 vaccine.
The Ioka fight, by a cruel twist of fate, is the second straight match in Ancajas’ career that was put on hold as his last title defense against Jonathan Rodriguez was postponed twice—first due to the Mexican’s visa problems then the second one due to the pandemic.
Ancajas admits that he was disappointed with how things turned out but he knows that the pandemic is not within his control.
“I’m actually quick to move on because it already happened to me several times already. For me, that really is the nature of boxing,” said Ancajas (33-1-2). “I admit that I was sad when I first knew that the fight was postponed because we’ve been waiting for a fight like this for so long.”
“We’ve been wanting a unification bout for so long and when we got it we were really happy. But it was postponed, it just feels different. It was sad but these are the times we live in and I just told myself that God may have plans for me and that’s why the fight was postponed.”
