A not so Lapid Response
By Percy Della

CAREER MISCUES AND PROFLIGACY notwithstanding, former World Boxing Council junior lightweight champion Rolando Navarrete probably deserves a balato (token share of winnings) from Manny Pacquiao, his more illustrious townmate.

Despite his wayward ways, Lando, the “Bad Boy of Dadiangas” once brought honor to flag and country when he won the WBC junior lightweight crown from Cornellius Boza Edwards in 1981.

After all, Manny has been more than generous to mere hangers in Los Angeles. The LA Boys, as colleague Recah Trinidad calls them, is a motley group serving as Pacquiao’s “informal staff”– drivers, cooks, errand boys, cordon sanitaire, etc. whenever their hero hits LA.

According to the boxing website Seconds out.com, one of the boys, camp aide and interpreter Joe Ramos recieved $50,000–more than a windfall from Pacquiao’s net earnings of $313,000 and change out a guaranteed minimum purse of $2 million from the Morales rematch.

During Manny’s victory celebration at the Wynn Las Vegas, Sen. Tito Lapid turned up the heat on erring boxing managers, promoters and the like.

Finally.

The chair of the Senate’s committee on games,, amusements and sports wants Senate hearings on why former world champion Luisito Espinosa has not been paid his championsip purse from nine years ago.

While whopping it up with a blue-ribbon gang of Pacquiao supporters, Lapid told Espinosa’s erstwhile manager Hermie Rivera now is just as good as any to remedy many of the oppressive and unethical business practices which have cheated professional boxers like Luisito.

Lapid wants to hold the hearings in aid of legislation against people who thumbed their nose at sports authorities by refusing to honor their commitment to boxers.

Luisito, now 38, has been temporarily stripped of his license by the athletic commission in California recently. Several savage losses to upstarts are too much for the commission’s sympathetic chair to bear.

Abandoned by his wife and still awaiting his unpaid prize of $150,000, the two-time world champion lives in his manager’s household in Fairfield, west of San Francisco.

Recently granted a green card by te United States, Luisito is ironically past his prime as a boxer. Luisito probably will come home in no time, if and when he gets the money due him from ex-South Cotabato governor Larry de Pedro, manager Rod Nazario and matchmaker Lito Mondejar.
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Sports note: While taping an interview with Rivera after Manny’s victory, Dyan Castillejo of ABS-CBN had her derriere dinged by a Filipino fan in a fit of drunken frenzy. With camera rolling Dyan stopped her sound bite search to confront the lascivious lad who had touched her lovely behind. Oh well, all in a day’s work for the industrious interviewer, according to Rivera.