Pinoy Fight Scribe

When I was a kid, I remember my father, a huge fight fan, watching home videos of the classic boxing matches on Betamax. Every night he would come home from a hard day’s work, juggling in his arms a few bottles of San Miguel Beer Pale Pilsen, some pulutan or appetizer, and some rented tapes of the latest cartoons as well as several action flicks. And of course, tapes of boxing: Hagler vs. Hearns, Hagler vs. Leonard (my father is a big fan of Marvin Hagler, insisting that Marvelous was robbed when he lost to Sugar Ray Leonard), Ali vs. Frazier, Arguello vs. Mancini (he is also fond of the late Alexis Arguello, and always brought up the Explosive Thin Man as an example whenever he wanted to point out that fighters don’t need to be bulky and have huge bulging muscles to possess a power punch), fights of a young menacing, untattooed (and disciplined) Mike Tyson, fights of a young talented Mexican who showed both power, skill, and a superb chin—one Julio Cesar Chavez.

My father would watch the cartoons first with me and my siblings,  and when bedtime came and as my mom would read us a bedtime story or two and then tuck us in, my father would then either watch his action flicks or the boxing. I would lie awake in bed and when he decided to watch the fights, I would sneak out of bed and join him in the living room. My father would let me watch a fight or two, to my delight, before he’d ask me to go back to bed and get some sleep lest the two of us got in trouble with my mother.

This was how I was introduced to the sport at a young age; this was how I became a fan of the sweet science.

I then became a fan of mixed martial arts when a friend introduced me to MMA back in college. He showed me a tape of a thin gangling guy in a gi that outfought and submitted a bigger, burlier, and more muscular guy in wrestling trunks. That fight, of course, was the legendary Ultimate Fighting Championship bout between Royce Gracie and Dan Severn, two of the first MMA fighters to be inducted in the UFC Hall of Fame. After watching the fight, I was instantly hooked. Who wouldn’t? Who would have believed that the wiry Gracie, with at least an eighty–pound weight disadvantage, could beat the much bigger and stronger Severn in such devastating and convincing fashion? And what was mind-boggling for me at that time was that Gracie managed to do it in a way I have never seen before. Since then, MMA has evolved and has become one of the fastest-growing sports worldwide.

As with many things in my life, I have my parents to thank in large part for the inception of this website: I have my mom to thank for instilling in me as a young kid a lifelong love for reading and, in turn, writing. I have my dad to thank for instilling in me as a young kid a lifelong love for sports, combat sports in particular.

For years I have been looking for a way to get  involved with boxing and MMA, and the closest I could manage is by writing about both sports.

Hence this blog.

Now for a short and obligatory disclaimer: the opinions I express in the dispatches found in this blog are solely my own and do not represent the views and opinions of any boxing or MMA organization or website with whom I am presently or was previously associated with.

With that said, I’d like to welcome you to Pinoy Fight Scribe, and I hope you enjoy your visit.