BENCHWARMER

Rey Tam’s stable reunion
RAMON DACAWI

BAGUIO CITY -- A simple labor of love for boxing has risen on a rectangular patch of earth manually leveled by has-beens and wannabes of the ring, on a hillside below the road to Beckel, La Trinidad.

“Salamat met ta nakapasyar kayo ditoy gym,” Rey Tam, the former Oriental-Pacific junior lightweight champion, greeted sponsors, well-wishers and media who came for its informal opening the other week. “Gym” hardly fits. The red primer-painted structure looks more like an unfinished, bantam version of the green, open but roofed basketball courts that have sprouted over the years in Baguio’s barangays.

Still, it’s more than what Rey and his young wards–including his three sons – dreamed of. The GI sheet roof will shield them from sun and rain. The cement pavement will free them of mud and dust as they spar or pound bags hanging on the horizontal bars connecting the steel posts.

Still, as public works contractor Larry Awkit observed, what was built cost six figures, shouldered by fans of the Rey Tam Stable that made the mid-70s and the ‘80s the golden era of boxing up here in the Cordillera.

Nostalgia triggered the start of the project late last year, after a police officer visited to see how Rey and his wards were doing. The officer ended up bankrolling the construction. A, infrastructure builder took care of the pavement. A lawyer asked his nephew to deliver a truckload of aggregates. An official of Benguet and an executive from John brought in the punching gear.

The project has relieved Rey from the daily burden of scrounging for the jeepney fare of his wards who earlier had to work out in other gyms. Rey will now be there anytime – as coach, trainer, timer and even to spar with. He will have time to till the soil and grow vegetables in a secluded place he had repaired to after hanging his gloves.

Everybody who came to share of the ritual black pig’s meat just hoped the new stable would produce another champion like Rey. Or a Melchor Degsi, once the No. 8 World Boxing Council flyweight contender. Or George Tam, Rey’s younger brother and former Oriental-Pacific challenger. If not Little Balsigan, once the top RP junior feather contender, or Rocky Arsenion, then thetop RP challenger in the same weight category.

They were all there, in a reunion of sorts of the finest crop of ring warriors that included former international amateur gold medalist Albert Tejada and boxer-pony boy Gavin Asion, Rey’s man Friday to Thursday.

I missed Jimmy Boy, who once came down from the hills to become one of the most talented in the flyweight class. Jimmy never got a chance for a crack at the title but he eventually got crowned as national champion – in darts.

I remembered Baguio boy and legal luminary Lizo Bucaycay. As local chapter president of the Integrated Bar of the Philippines, Manong Lizo sponsored the Oriental-Pacific title match between Rey and Japanese champion Apollo Yoshio at the jampacked University ofBaguio gym.

What a hell of a lopsided fight it was. Rey, whose fights I covered since he barged into the national ratings, was then in his prime. Yoshio entered the ring with quite a credential, including having fought to a draw with then world featherweight champion BenVillaflor.

Against the southpaw Igorot-Chinese mestizo from Kapangan town and Chinatown in Camdas, I honestly saw Yoshio land only one clear, solid blow throughout the 12-round match. He fell prey to Rey’s uncanny ability to read what punch was coming from the footwork of hisopponent...

“The feet move first before the punch and that’s what I observe,” Rey once told me. To him, the shift in stance works like a telegraph that tells him if it’s a straight, a hook or a cross that was to be unleashed.

No wonder Rey was the only fighter I saw who could anticipate and, therefore, evade, duck or even catch a glove and pull it to out-balance his foe and swiftly deliver the counter-punch. He called this technique aggressive counter-punching. Looking back, how I wished he was facing then world champion Alexis Arguello that time he turned Yoshio into mince-meat. He was then at his prime. Rey eventually lost to Arguello, the legend from Nicaragua. Fans blamed it on jet lag, lack of training or even on booze. Whatever, he was then past his prime.

Rey doesn’t drink nowadays, something Little eBalsigan doesn’t understand. “Tatta a kome nga aginum kami, haan nga idi,” Balsigan whispered. He had just emerged from a corner he and Rocky Arsenio were raising glasses to toast the completion of the gym.

But Rey, Balsigan and the rest of the original Igorot warriors know they can’t live in the past. Balsigan, who lost a finger to gangrene, has turned dispatcher for a jeepney line. Rocky is into farming. Thanks to their equally aging fans, the original stable members now have a gym to pass on their winning techniques to a new crop of Igorot fighters. (e-mail:rdacawi@yahoo.com for comments).