Sporting Chance

Evans moves to MBA

.c.San Francisco State hotshot Kenny Evans is playing for the Cebu Gems in the Metropolitan Basketball Association (MBA) this season.

.c.Evans' US-based agent Bobby Rius, who blew into town the other day, said the six-foot guard withdrew from the Philippine Basketball Association (PBA) draft because he failed to beat the Friday noon deadline to get a Certificate of Recognition (CR) from the Bureau of Immigration (BI).

.c.Rius explained that Evans' mother Maria Arlinda Base of Cebu lost her US naturalization papers which would've proved that she was still a Filipino citizen when he was born.

.c.The BI issues a CR to a Fil-foreigner only if he or she was born to a full-blooded Filipino parent who was a Filipino citizen at the time of his or her birth. The PBA allows only Fil-foreigners with CRs to play as locals.

.c.A Fil-foreigner had up to last Friday noon to submit his CR to the PBA to be eligible for the draft last Sunday.

.c."Kenny's mother sent in her original naturalization papers to a company when she applied for a job," said Rius. "She never got the papers back. She tried to get another copy but she was told it will take a while. The good news is she found her old Philippine passport which shows she was still a Filipino citizen when Kenny was born."

.c.Rius said Evans will pursue his application for a CR but in the meantime, he'll be playing in the MBA which doesn't require a CR from its Fil-foreigner players, only a Special Work Permit from the Department of Labor and Employment. Evans was signed to a one-year contract stipulating a monthly salary of P160,000 with an option to quit during the season.

.c.Cebu coach Tonichi Yturri and Gems team manager Danny Francisco scouted Evans in the US before making the offer. The deal involves advancing $8,600 for Evans' child support bond which the US government required before issuing the Fil-foreigner a passport. The advance will be deducted from Evans' salary. Evans, 25, is a single parent who has a son.

.c."My goal is to get Kenny to play," said Rius. "He's definitely a PBA player. Once he gets his CR and after he proves himself in the MBA, I'm sure there will be a lot of PBA teams calling."

.c.Rius' other clients are Noy Castillo, Robert Duat, Nic Belasco, Ali Peek, Jon Ordonio, and the Seigle brothers.

.c.Gerry Peñalosa's manager Rudy Salud wrote World Boxing Council (WBC) President Jose Sulaiman a letter last Friday urging a more consistent, more uniform, and more understandable scoring system for title fights.

.c."I am greatly appalled by the continued .c.rampant occurrence of particular rounds in a boxing match where one or two judges would score a round 10-9 for a boxer while another would score the same round 10-9 for the other boxer," said Salud, who was WBC Secretary-General from 1966 to 1971. "That this could happen sparingly would be understandable but that it would happen in something like six rounds of a 12-round fight clearly demonstrates a lack of a basic, proper, and uniform appreciation by the ring officials of the rules on scoring. The usual explanation that the judges see the fight from their different locations is extremely lame and will no longer wash."

.c.Salud said the WBC will stage a World Congress for Boxing Officials in March in Las Vegas. "I sincerely hope that this will be a fruitful Congress which will clarify the correct scoring technique and referring, too, towards a just arbitration of every boxing contest," he added.

.c.Salud noted that at the WBC Convention in Moscow last September, it was agreed for judges to put more weight on clear and telling blows that powder-puff punches and credit aggressiveness over defensive tactics. Apparently, two of the three judges in the Peñalosa-In Joo Cho bout in Seoul had their own interpretation of how to score a fight.