By KRISTEL SATUMBAGA
Filipino martial arts officials have bonded together to torpedo the proposed bill in Congress seeking to ban minors from taking combat sports.
The group is composed of 13 national sports associations that included Senator Migs Zubiri of arnis, Ed Picson of boxing, Pearl Managuelod of muay thai, Dave Carter of judo and wrestling’s Alvin Aguilar.
They came out with a position paper against House Bill No. 1526, or an “An Act Banning Minors from Full-Contact Competitive Sports,” which was recently filed by Representatives Elizaldy Co and Alfredo Garbin, Jr. of partylist Ako Bicol.
Other signatories are pencak silat’s Princess Jacel Kiram, wushu’s Julian Camacho, kickboxing’s Wharton Chan, karate’s Richard Lim, jiu-jitsu’s Ferdinand Agustin, sambo’s L. Pietro Paolo Claudio and taekwondo’s Raul Sampson.
“Calm all of you people, your combat sport NSAs got this,” said Managuelod, who recently won as a board member in the Philippine Olympic Committee, on Facebook.
The group said the bill, if enacted into law, would impede, if not utterly kill, grassroots development in events where the country is traditionally strong in international competitions like the Olympics, Asian Games and Southeast Asian Games.
In the Olympics, in fact, the country had won four medals in boxing and two of the four it will send in Tokyo next year are boxers Eumir Marcial and Irish Magno.
“We urge our honorable lawmakers to consider the preceding information in their deliberations on this bill. We hope that the impact such a bill could make on our respective sports development would be taken to mind before any decisions are made,” said the group in a statement.
Philippine Olympic Committee president Abraham Tolentino, who is also a Tagaytay Congressman and PhilCycling chief, had already voiced his opposition to the said bill.
