ASBC to honor three Filipino fighters

MANILA, Philippines – Three Filipinos share the spotlight with the brightest boxers and officials from all over the continent as winners of the Asian Boxing Confederation’s Best Asians 2016 awards.

Sixteen-year-old Criztian Pitt Laurente got the nod as Best Asian Male Junior Boxer while Phl mentor Pat Gaspi took the Best Asian Coach award and Maria Karina Picson drew raves as the Best Asian Supervisor.

Gen. Santos City junior boxer Laurente gave the Philippines its lone gold medal in the sixth Children of Asia International Games last July in Yakutsk, Russia, where he defeated Kazakh Taltibek Sulchar, 30-29, 29-28, 9-28 in the finals.

Gaspi and Picson were lauded for their outstanding works as mentor and supervisor, respectively.

The three, along with 11 other winners, were chosen by the ASBC via social media, according to ASBC executive director Bagdaulet Turekhanov in a correspondence to the Association of Boxing Alliances in the Philippines (ABAP) yesterday.  

Kazakh Daniyar Yeleussinov, who captured the 69kg division gold in the Rio Olympics, won Best Asian Men’s Elite Boxer of 2016 honors while Yin Junhua, a silver medalist in the 2016 Olympiad, was adjudged Best Asian Women’s Elite Boxer.

Japanese Hayato Tsutumi and Chinese lady pug Pan Sumei took top honors as Best Youth Boxers, Chinese Yu Lisai netted the Best Asian Women’s Junior Boxer plum, Kazakh Asianbek Shymbergenov of Astana Arlans and Uzbek Lasurbek Latipov were Best Asian WSB Boxer and APB Boxer, respectively, and Uzbek Shakhram Giyasov was Asian Discovery of the Year.

Macau’s Kuok Veng Vong and Chinese Jingjing Zhang were adjudged Best ITO and Best R&J, respectively, while the Kazakhstan Boxing Federation was named Best Asian National Federation.