Philippine Sports News and Updates

The contentious issues between the Filipino handlers of International Boxing Federation minimumweight champion Florante Condes and their American partners appear headed for the courts based on recent developments.

Games and Amusements Board boxing division chief Dr. Nasser Cruz said it’s turning into a legal battle, while Condes, who sat in at one of the meetings, where heated discussions took place between his Filipino manager Aljoe Jaro and Dante Ortiz told us, he thought he would have to fight and observed that he didn’t know boxing was like this.

The United States group includes Ortiz, who is of Puerto Rican heritage and with whom Jaro signed a co-managers contract on July 25, 2006 in the kitchen of his home in Binangonan, Rizal, former Filipino world champion Morris East and Bobby Bostick Promotions, which was represented in the discussions in Manila recently by Cezar Trevino of Trevino Boxing.

On the Philippine side are Jaro, who is Condes’ manager but, according to the GAB is not the officially registered manager, but rather his wife Alice and longtime boxing man Rod Nazario, who is the champ’s business manager and on whose weekly boxing show “In This Corner” he made a name for himself.

In fact, Trevino and Ortiz hinted that by signing agreements as Condes’ manager and negotiating on his behalf, Jaro was guilty of misrepresentation and could face legal problems in the US in particular, if they decide to take that route should the present problems escalate.

For his part, Jaro claims a series of failures on the part of Ortiz as co-manager and Bostick as promoter. To begin with, when negotiations with the Indonesians for Muhammad Rachman to stage a mandatory title defense against Condes broke down and the IBF called for a purse bid, Bostick Promotions didn’t even make an offer.

Instead, international matchmaker Samson Lewkowicz made an offer of $25,000 on behalf of Warriors Boxing. They won since it was the only bid and applying the IBF rules on purse bid allocations, the champion was to get 86 percent and the challenger only 15 percent. The result was Condes got a pittance of $3,750 under the contract.

However, Trevino flew to Manila long after the fight, which angered Jaro since they had promised several times even in e-mails to this writer, to attend the Jakarta title fight as a group. When Condes won, there were several e-mails from the Americans saying how proud they were and that they were on the way to Manila to visit their champion and give him a check for $9,500, which appeared to be something of a bonus.

It took several weeks for them to get to Manila and when they did, Bostick was not with them. Instead, it was Trevino, a comparatively small man with a superb voice and a calm and collected demeanor. In fact, it was Trevino’s disposition and GAB chairman Eric Buhain’s stature that kept the discussions in the boardroom from getting violent with Jaro storming out of the room virtually frothing in the mouth over the petty and irritating attitude of Ortiz, which he said didn’t help the discussions move forward.

In the end, however, they all shook hands, posed for pictures, gave Viva Sports and Standard Today interviews and the sentiment of Buhain was that all’s well that ends well. Little did he realize it was only a temporary truce.

A few days later, all hell broke loose as Jaro and Nazario announced the staging of the first title defense of Condes on Nov. 16 against the former champion Rachman with the fight to be held at the Ynares Center. Jaro claimed they had agreed for alternate staging of title fights with Condes’ request that his first title defense be held before his hometown fans.

Basically, the Americans said no and Trevino claimed that they had lined up a non-title fight against Mexico’s minimumweight champion Raul “Raiyto” Garcia in La Paz, Mexico on Oct. 13 since nobody from Manila called them to negotiate a title defense in the Philippines .

But Nazario and Jaro claimed a study of the two contracts—the EXCLUSIVE MANAGEMENT (CO-MANAGERS, TRAINER AND BOXING FIGHTER) AGREEMENT and the subsequent EXCLUSIVE PROMOTIONAL RIGHTS AGREEMENT—were flawed and the latter onerous and as Nazario said a rip-off. Problem is, Buhain insists that both Jaro and his lawyer Joey Mendoza had told him “at least 10 times during the GAB meeting,” when he showed them the promotional contract and questioned them on whether they would honor it, the answer was “yes, we honor this contract.”

Clearly, Buhain could not now turn around and take a different stance when the parties involved themselves in his presence said they will honor the contract no matter what its deficiencies. The question arises as to whether the GAB boxing division and the agency’s lawyers studied the contract and failed to find anything wrong because it is imperative that the GAB primarily act to protect the interests of Filipino boxers.

Here are salient features first of the Co-Managers contract: Section 4 (a) which Jaro said have been violated by Ortiz: “Co manager Dante (Ortiz) will pay for all training, boxing equipment, gym dues, food, accommodation/lodging, dental-medical care, medical examinations required by the boxing commission with jurisdiction over each bout, travel expenses, cell phone, round-trip air transportation from Philippines to USA or any other country in the Americas or Europe if necessary for the boxer.”

In Section 5 on the Duties of Trainer, identified as Morris East (a former world champion and professional trainer) “to get the best physical condition of the boxer.” The same section also states that Jaro “grants to trainer and co-manager Dante the exclusive rights to work in the corner as seconds during every fight of the boxer” and that co-manager Dante also has “the exclusive duties as a cut-man of every bout, the right to choose the substitute trainer, seconds or cut-man if necessary.”

With regard to the term of the agreement, the contract states three years but that “if any time during the term of this agreement the boxer becomes ranked in a world organization (WBC, IBF, WBA, WBO) or any equivalent world sanctioning body, the term of the agreement extends until the boxer’s status changes.”

In Section 8 on Distribution of Earnings, the contract binds Condes to pay Jaro and Ortiz “one-third of 33 1/3 percent or the equivalent percentage allowed by the commission or authority in charge,” where the bout takes place.

The boxer “agrees to pay the trainer 10 percent to the trainer on each bout the trainer works.” Notarized on Sept. 30, 2006 at the Philippine Consulate General in Los Angeles, the contract was signed by Jaro, Ortiz, Condes and East.

The violations stare us in the face. Ortiz never paid for any of the expenses as stipulated in Section 4 (a) as they applied to Condes since the contract came into force and leading to the fight with Rachman.

East never trained Condes at all and in fact he and Ortiz were never even present to carry out their duties as stipulated in the contract leading to and during the Rachman title fight. Yet they deducted their respective shares from the total purse of Condes—$13,250—despite the fact that in Section 8, Condes is bound to pay East on “each bout the trainer works.”

Source: Manila Standard Today