LARAWAN NILIKHA GAMIT ANG MIDJOURNEY

Wala pang dalawng linggo ang lumipas mula nang makamit ni Carlos Yulo ang makasaysayang dobleng gintong medalya sa Paris 2024 Olympics, ngunit tila napakatagal na ng kanyang aktwal na pagtatanghal. Sa kabila ng kaniyang malaking nagawa, natabunan na ito ng atensyon ng nakakalungkot na drama tungkol sa kanyang pamilya, lalo na sa kanyang ina. Bukod pa rito, ang tanging aspeto ng kuwento na tila tumatak sa isipan ng mga tao sa buong mundo ay ang mga biyayang naghihintay sa gymnast dahil sa kanyang tagumpay.

Ngunit ang hindi pa gaanong natatalakay (kung natatalakay man) ay kung gaano ka-natatangi at imposible ng nagawa ni Yulo.

Oo, mayroon tayong mga atleta na naging mga superstars sa pandaigdigang entablado. Ang unang pangalan sa larangan ng pampalakasan sa Pilipinas, si Manny Pacquiao, ay isa sa pinakamahuhusay na boksingero sa kasaysayan ng boksing.

Ngunit mayroong makasaysayang konteksto si Manny Pacquiao. Ang boksing ay marahil ikalawa lamang sa basketball sa puso ng maraming Pilipinong tagahanga ng sports. Ang unang world champion sa kasaysayan ng ating bansa, si Pancho Villa, ay isang boksingero, gayundin ang unang tunay na superstar na atleta ng Pilipinas, si Gabriel “Flash” Elorde, na nagdomina noong dekada ’60. Ang pinakatumatak na kaganapan sa ating bansa ay ang Thrilla in Manila, ang brutal na heavyweight boxing match sa pagitan nina Muhammad Ali at Joe Frazier. Sa bawat dekada mula kay Elorde, nagkaroon ng bagong Filipino world champion.

LARAWAN NILIKHA GAMIT ANG MIDJOURNEY

Nagtuloy din sa Olympics ang tagumpay natin sa boxing. Mayroon tayong 10 medalya sa Olympic boxing; wala nang ibang sport ang mayroon nang higit pa sa dalawa.

Si Pacquiao ay isang minsan-sa-isang-siglo na atleta. Ngunit dahil sa ating kultura sa boksing, nakatakda nang dumating ang panahon na magkakaroon tayo ng isang minsan-sa-isang-siglo na atleta. Dakila si Pacquiao, ngunit hindi dapat ikagulat ng sinuman na nagkaroon ang Pilipinas, na may ating pagmamahal at kasaysayan sa boksing, ng isang ganoong kahusay na atleta. Tila ito ay itinakda.

Katulad ni Pacquiao, mayroon ding konteksto si Hidilyn Diaz, ang unang Pilipinong nagwagi ng ginto sa Olympics. Bagamat ang weightlifting ay hindi tradisyonal na pinagmumulan ng medalya para sa ating bansa, nakapagbigay na ito ng karangalan sa ating mga kapitbahay.

Nagsimula ang rebolusyon sa weightlifting sa Southeast Asia noong 2000, nang payagan ang mga kababaihan na makipagkompetensya sa isport na ito sa unang pagkakataon. Noong sumabak si Hidilyn Diaz sa kanyang unang Olympics sa Beijing noong 2008 bilang isang wildcard entry, darkhorse contender na ang Thailand at Indonesia sa weightlifting; ang mga Thai ay nakapag-uwi na ng limang medalya, kabilang ang dalawang ginto, sa dalawang nagdaang Olympics, habang ang mga Indonesian ay nakapag-uwi ng apat na medalya. Kapansin-pansin na lahat ng mga unang medalyang iyon ay napanalunan ng mga kababaihan.

Hindi na ito nakakagulat. Hindi tulad ng ibang sports, ang weightlifting ay hindi nangangailangan ng malaking perang puhunan para sa pagsasanay. Bukod pa rito, ang mga weight division ay nagbigay ng pantay na laban para sa mga maliliit na atleta na sumasali sa isport.

LARAWAN NILIKHA GAMIT ANG MIDJOURNEY

Nabigo si Diaz sa mga laban sa Beijing noong 2008 at sa London noong 2012. Sa bawat pagkakataon, lumaban siya sa mas malalaking lifters sa 58kg division.

Ngunit nandoon na ang gabay para sa tagumpay sa medalya para sa isang Pilipinong weightlifter, lalo na sa isang babae, upang makagawa ng isang tagumpay. Ang kailangan lamang ay kaunting tulak.

Para kay Hidilyn Diaz, ang tulak na iyon ay dumating nang magpasya siyang bumaba sa timbang patungo sa 53kg. Matapos iyon, nagkaroon ng sunod-sunod na tagumpay si Hidilyn. Dinomina ang mga kompetisyon sa antas Southeast Asia at Asia, bago nagwagi ng pilak na medalya sa Rio de Janeiro noong 2016. Nagpatuloy ang tagumpay hanggang sa Asian Games sa Jakarta noong 2018, hanggang sa makasaysayang tagumpay sa gintong medalya sa Tokyo 2020.

Patuloy na insipirasyon ang tapang, determinasyon, at lakas ni Hidilyn Diaz. Ngunit higit pa rito, dapat ding maging inspirasyon ang katotohanang, kahit gaano siya kadakila, si Hidilyn Diaz ay hindi natatangi. Ang kanyang karanasan ay nagpapatunay sa isang bagay na nalaman ng mga Indonesian at Thai noon pa: ang tamang lifter sa tamang timbang ay kayang makamit ang tagumpay sa Olympics, kahit pa ang mga atleta mula sa ating bahagi ng mundo.

Nagsisimula na itong mangyari. Bagamat hindi nakapasok si Diaz sa Paris Olympics, nagpadala ang Pilipinas ng hindi isa, hindi dalawa, kundi tatlong weightlifters sa laro. Iyon mismo ay isang tagumpay na para sa isport. Bagamat wala sa kanila ang nagwagi ng medalya, sa lahat ng nabasa mo hanggang sa puntong ito, magugulat ka ba kung may isa pang Pilipinong weightlifter na muling makakagawa ng tagumpay sa hinaharap?

Hindi tulad ng boksing o weightlifting, walang weight divisions sa gymnastics. Ang isport na ito ay isa sa mga "glamour events" sa Olympics, na umaakit ang pinakamahuhusay na talento mula sa bawat bansa.

Pawang magastos ang gymnastics. Sa isang pag-aaral sa Amerika, binilang ang gymnastics na isa sa mga pinakamahal na sport para sa mga kabataan, kasama ang ice hockey, skiing/snowboarding, field hockey, at lacrosse, na lahat ay nangangailangan ng espesyal na kagamitan.

Ang mga gymnast ay kailangan ding magsanay ng halos buong buhay nila. Sinabi Amerikanong superstar na si Simone Biles na nagsimula siyang magsanay sa edad na anim na taon, at ayon sa kanya, iyon ay "karaniwang huli" na.

Ang lahat ng mga gastos sa pagsasanay ay nagpapatong-patong, kaya hindi na nakakagulat na ang mayayamang bansa ang nagdodomina sa gymnastics. Sa 110 atleta na lumahok sa men's artistic gymnastics sa Paris, iilan lamang ang mula sa mga mahihirap na bansa. Sa men's field, si Carlos Yulo ang nag-iisang Southeast Asian na lumahok, at siya lang din ang nag-iisang atleta mula sa isang developing country na nagwagi ng gintong medalya.

Para sa mga tao mula sa ating bahagi ng mundo, sa ating kalagayan, ang manalo ng kahit ano sa sport na ito, sa ganitong antas, ay halos imposibleng mangyari. Hindi ito dapat nangyari. Ginawa itong posible ni Carlos Yulo. Hindi lang isa, ngunit dalawang beses.

Simula't sapul pa lamang, alam na ng mga may alam. Sa isang report noong 2012 ng Philippine Star, pinuri si Yulo ng isa sa mga coach niya, na namangha sa kanya bilang nag-iisang bata sa kanyang edad na kayang gawin ang isa sa mga mahihirap na triple twist routines.

Sa kuwento ng mga bayani, palaging ang pag-alis ang unang yugto. Sa edad na 16, iniwan ni Yulo ang kanyang tahanan upang manirahan sa Japan, kung saan siya nagsanay sa ilalim ng Japanese coach na si Munehiro Kugimiya. Nilabanan ng batang kampeon ang pangungulila sa bahay at isang matinding regimen ng pagsasanay upang umusbong bilang isang world beater.

Sa edad na 18, napanalunan ni Yulo ang kanyang unang medalya, isang bronze, sa 2018 world championships. Nang sumunod na taon, napanalunan niya ang gintong medalya sa floor exercise.

Dahil sa kanyang lubhang talento at bilis ng pag-angat, inasahan na ng kaniyang kampo ang kaniyang tagumpay sa Tokyo 2020 Olympics: hindi lamang isang ginto sa floor exercise, kundi pati na rin isang pilak sa vault. Hindi alintana na siya ang kauna-unahang Pilipinong gymnast na lumahok sa Olympics sa mahigit kalahating siglo.

Marahil dahil sa pressure, o marahil hindi pa siya ganap na handa, ngunit nabig si Yulo sa kaniyang misyon sa Olympics kung saan nagningning ang ibang atleta ng bansa.

Ngayon, pagkalagpas ng tatlong taon at dalawang gintong medalya, ang buong yugto ay tila isang kuwento na isinulat ng kung sinuman upang dagdagan ng drama ang saga ni Carlos Yulo.

At maraming naging drama. Habang mabilis na nakabawi si Yulo mula sa kanyang unang Olympic stint at nanalo pa ng isa pang gintong medalya sa 2021 world championships, sa pagkakataong ito sa vault, nagulo ang kanyang paghahanda matapos niyang maghiwalay ng landas kay Kugimiya nitong nakaraang taon.

Napagtanto ni Cynthia Carrion, pinuno ng Philippine gymnastics at matagal nang tagasuporta ni Yulo, na hindi na maisasalba ang sitwasyon sa pagitan ni Coach Kugimiya at ng kanyang alaga.

Iniwan ni Yulo ang Japan at bumalik sa Maynila upang ipagpatuloy ang pagsasanay dito. Isang galaw kung iisipin, ay medyo nakakabaliw dahil, sino ba naman ang umaalis sa Japan at bumabalik ng Maynila upang mag-training? Sinubukan ni Carrion na kumuha ng bagong Japanese coach, na sa isang pagkakataon ay hindi agad makapunta sa Pilipinas kaya remote lang niyang tinuruan si Yulo. Sa huli, napurnada na din ang planong iyon.

Sa halos buong nakaraang taon, walang coach si Yulo. Sa halip, lumipad na lamang siya sa iba’t ibang bansa para sa maiikling pagsasanay sa mga gym sa buong mundo kung saan humihingi siya ng mga tip mula sa mga coach doon.

Sa Olympics, kasama niya ang dati niyang coach sa junior level na si Aldrin Castañeda. Noong nakaraang taon, tinanong si Yulo kung paano niya ikukumpara ang dalawang coach: inaming niyang mas mataas ang kaalaman ng dati niyang coach na si Kugimiya, pero mas nagkakaintindihan sila ni Castañeda. Hindi ko alam sa iyo, pero para bang vibes lang talaga ang dating.

Sa huli, hindi na naging mahalaga ang lahat ng iyon. Hindi ang kasaysayan (o kakulangan nito). Hindi ang kawalan ng pagkakapantay-pantay. Hindi ang mga bagahe. At tiyak na hindi ang drama. Sa sunod-sunod na flip at tumble, pinaikot ni Carlos Yulo ang lahat ng iyon sa kanyang natataning henyo.

Ang pinaka-astig na bahagi ng lahat ay kung paano niya ginawang tila nakatakdang mangyari ang dating imposible. Na parang hindi pa sapat na nakamamangha na nga na mayroon tayong isang bata mula sa Leveriza street sa Maynila na ipinanganak na may sapat na midi-chlorians sa dugo para manalo ng dalawang gintong medalya sa Olympics sa gymnastics. Tigilan na ang pagpansain sa mga hindi mahalagang bagay. Baka hindi na tayo kailanman makakita ng isang katulad ni Carlos Yulo.

This piece was translated from the original using ChatGPT and carefully edited before publication.

(Ang akdang ito ay isinalin mula sa orihinal gamit ang ChatGPT at masusing in-edit bago ilathala.)

IMAGE GENERATED VIA MIDJOURNEY

It has barely been a couple of weeks since Carlos Yulo’s historic double gold medal victory at the Paris 2024 Olympics, but his actual performance already seems like it happened forever ago. As monumental as his achievements were, they have since been dwarfed in attention by the whole unfortunate drama with his family, especially his mother.1 Beyond that, the only other facet of the story that seemed to resonate with audiences around the world has been the bonanza awaiting the gymnast for winning his double gold.

What hasn’t been examined deeply (if at all) is just how singular, how impossible, Yulo’s achievement is.

Sure, we’ve produced athletes who’ve become superstars on the world stage. The first name in Philippine sports, Manny Pacquiao, is one of the very best fighters2 in the history of the boxing.

But there is historical context for Manny Pacquiao. Boxing is maybe second only to basketball in the hearts of many Pinoy sports fans. The first world champion in our country’s history, Pancho Villa, was a boxer, as was the Philippines’ first true superstar athlete, Gabriel “Flash” Elorde, who dominated the ‘60s.3 The most enduring event ever held in the Philippines remains the Thrilla in Manila, the brutal classic heavyweight boxing match betweene Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier. There has been a new Filipino world champion each decade since Elorde.

IMAGE GENERATED VIA MIDJOURNEY

Boxing success has translated to the Olympics as well. We have 10 medals in Olympic boxing; no other sport has more than two.

Pacquiao is a once-in-a-century athlete. But given our boxing culture, it was only a matter of time before we produced a once-in-a-century athlete. Pacquiao was great, but it shouldn’t surprise anyone that the Philippines, with our passion for and history with boxing, was able to produce someone that great. In many ways, it was inevitable.

Just like Pacquiao, there is also context for Hidilyn Diaz, the Philippines’ first gold winner in the Olympics. While weightlifting hasn’t always been a traditional medal-rich sport for our country, it has actually been a source of glory for our neighbors.

The Southeast Asian weightlifting revolution began in 2000, when women were allowed to compete in the sport for the first time. By the time Hidilyn Diaz competed in her first Olympics in Beijing in 2008 as a wildcard entry, Thailand and Indonesia had already turned into darkhorse contenders in the sport; the Thais had won five medals, including two golds, over the two Olympics prior, while the Indonesians won four medals. Interestingly, all those first several medals were won by women.

It made perfect sense. Unlike some other sports, weightlifting does not require intensive capital investment for training.4 Plus, weight divisions leveled the playing field for diminutive athletes competing in the sport.

IMAGE GENERATED VIA MIDJOURNEY

Diaz had forgettable stints in Beijing in 2008 (10th of 12) and London in 2012 (Did Not Finish). Each time, she competed against much bigger opponents in the 58kg division.

But the blueprint was there for medal success for a Filipino weightlifter, especially a woman, to make a breakthrough. All it needed was a little bit of push.

For Hidilyn Diaz, that push came with her decision to drop down in weight to the 53kg. After that, the Pinay powerhouse went on a blazing run, dominating competitions at the Southeast Asian and the Asian levels, before winning the silver medal in Rio de Janeiro in 2016. The winning continued through the Asian Games in Jakarta in 2018, all the way to the historic gold medal victory at Tokyo 2020.

We should continue to be inspired by Hidilyn Diaz’s grit, determination, and strength.5 But beyond that, we should also be inspired by the fact that, great as she is, Hidilyn Diaz is by no means unique. Her experience confirms what the Indonesians and the Thais already know: the right lifter at the right weight can capture Olympic glory, even those from our part of the world.

That has started to happen. While Diaz did not qualify for the Paris Olympics,6 the Philippines sent not one, not two, but three weightlifters7 to the Games. That in itself is an achievement for the sport. While none of them won a medal, given everything you just read to this point, would you be surprised if another Filipino weightlifter ends up breaking through in the future?

Unlike boxing or weightlifting, there are no weight divisions in gymnastics. The sport is one of the “glamour events” in the Olympics,8 and it attracts the best of the best talents every country has to offer.

It is also pretty pricey. An American study listed gymnastics as among the most expensive sports for youth, alongside ice hockey, skiing/snowboarding, field hockey, and lacrosse, all of which require specialized equipment.

Gymnasts also need to have trained their whole lives. The American superstar Simone Biles said she started to train at six years old and even that, according to her, was “typically late.”

All the training costs add up, so it stands to reason that the rich countries dominate gymnastics. Of the 110 athletes who competed in men’s artistic gymnastics in Paris, only a handful were from poor countries. In the men’s field, Carlos Yulo was the lone Southeast Asian9 to compete, and was the only athlete from a developing country10 to win a gold medal.

For people from our part of the world, with our background, winning anything in this sport, at this level, is damn near impossible. This wasn’t supposed to happen. Carlos Yulo made it happen. Twice.

From the start, those who would know, knew. In a 2012 story by the Philippine Star, one of Yulo’s coaches raved about how he was the only kid at that age he’d seen do one of the difficult triple twist routines.

The next few turns in the story border on cliché, but then again, departure is always the first act of the hero’s journey. At 16, Yulo left his home to live in Japan, where he underwent training under the Japanese coach Munehiro Kugimiya. The Pinoy wunderkind overcame homesickness and an intense training regimen to blossom into a world beater.

At 18, Yulo won his first medal, a bronze, in the 2018 world championships. The next year, he won the gold medal in the floor exercise.

Yulo’s talent was so tantalizing and his rise so meteoric that ahead of the Tokyo 2020 Olympics, his camp was expecting him to not just win a gold medal in the floor exercise, but also a silver in the vault. Never mind the fact that he was the first Filipino gymnast to compete in the Olympics in more than half a century.

Maybe it was the pressure, or maybe he just wasn’t physically ready, but Yulo was perhaps the biggest disappointment in what was otherwise a banner Philippine campaign in Tokyo.

Today though, three years after the Tokyo debacle and two gold medals later, the whole episode reads like a convenient plot device introduced by whoever was writing the Carlos Yulo saga, specifically to introduce some spice.

Oh, there was plenty of spice. While Yulo recovered quickly from his first Olympic stint to win another gold medal at the 2021 world championships, this time in the vault, his preparations went into disarray after he parted ways with Kugimiya11 last year.

Much to her credit, Philippine gymnastics chief and Yulo’s longtime patron Cynthia Carrion realized that the situation between the Japanese coach and his longtime pupil had become untenable, and tried to make the best of things.12

Yulo, for his part, left Japan and moved back to Manila to continue training here instead. Which is insane because, well, read that sentence again. Carrion tried to hire a new Japanese coach, who at one point could not come yet to the Philippines so he only coached Yulo remotely,13 and that plan eventually fizzled out.

For most of the past year, Yulo did not have a coach, instead flying abroad for short stints at gyms around the world where “he was eking out training tips from coaches at each stopover.”

At the Olympics, Yulo would reunite with his old juniors coach, Aldrin Castañeda. Last year, he was asked to compare the two coaches: “My [former] coach, his knowledge is more top-tier. But experience-wise, my coach (Castañeda) and I really got it.” I don’t know about you, but that sounds a lot like being there for the vibes.14

In the end, none of that mattered. Not the history (or lack thereof). Not the inequality. Not the baggage. And certainly not the drama. With a series of flips and tumbles, Carlos Yulo made all those things bend to his genius.

The most impressive part of the whole thing is how he made the impossible now feel inevitable. As if it weren’t crazy enough that we have a kid from Leveriza street in Manila who was born with enough midi-chlorians in his blood to win two Olympic gold medals in gymnastics. Stop paying attention to unimportant shit. We might never see anything like Carlos Yulo ever again.

Midjourney: “the ultimate warrior inside a professional wrestling ring in the style of a Pixar cartoon”

SO HERE’S MY DIRTY little secret: I love wrestling. 

I’ve loved wrestling for so long that I don’t even remember a time in my life when I didn’t love wrestling, which wasn’t the case for many of the things I've loved since I was very little.

For example, I still remember that I came to love basketball because of Kuya Tarzan, a friend of my mom who got that nickname because, when working at the nearby Holiday Inn, he would clean rooms without a shirt on, just like the Lord of the Jungle. Anyway, Kuya Tarzan brainwashed me as a kid to root for his favorite team in the Philippine Basketball Association, and so they became my favorite team too.

I still remember watching Perseus slay Medusa in a videotape of an old movie, which made me a fiend for everything mythological, be they Greek, Roman, or Norse. I still remember that I fell in love with space after my grandmother bought a set of old Popular Science encyclopedias, which made me intimately familiar with each of the planets in our solar system, memorizing every little detail about them that I’ve spent the rest of my life since forgetting. Those old encyclopedias also made me fall in love with dinosaurs — the Diplodocus was my favorite, because it was longer than a basketball court and it dominated the Jurassic Period. By the time the Steven Spielberg movie came out, many years later, I was so over dinosaurs, and besides, didn’t everyone know that the T-Rex was from the Cretaceous Period?

But I don’t remember when I got into wrestling. I just remember my grandfather, who we called Tatay, making fun of me and my cousin whenever we watched it on television. “Look at the guy when he punches, he’s stomping at the mat!” Tatay would tell us, incredulous. “He’s not even making contact!” But we never stopped watching.

We would even watch Pinoy Wrestling, a local businessman’s half-baked attempt to start a local wrestling federation. It only ran for a few months, but I still remember many of the characters from that show, more than 30 years later. There was a guy named Joe Pogi, which translates to “Handsome Joe,” and he would always come to the ring with a lovely lady on each arm. During his entrance, the color commentator, a local comedian named Jograd Dela Torre, would go crazy cheering for Joe Pogi. When the other TV announcer would ask why, Jograd would reply, “Well, there’s only so few handsome men on this earth, so why wouldn’t we be pulling for each other?” Of course, the best part of the bit is that both Joe Pogi and Jograd Dela Torre were quite objectively ugly. 

(Years later when I started my sports blog, I would steal that joke with a nod to Jograd, whenever I would take the side of a handsome athlete on an issue, because there were so few of us left on this earth, so why wouldn’t we be pulling for each other?)

I also remember staying up late to watch WrestleMania IV on TV, which was held at a really classy joint called the Trump Plaza Hotel and Casino, which to me just sounded like the most fabulous place on earth. Just before the main event between the Macho Man Randy Savage and the Million Dollar Man Ted DiBiase, they even showed the owner of the venue, Mr. Donald Trump, at ringside. He looked like a really classy guy.

A few days later, I was visiting a cousin who had a tape of a new wrestling event: WrestleMania VI. I was confused; wasn’t I just watching Wrestlemania IV a couple of nights ago? Looking back on it now, I think that was the first time I truly felt the inequality between the Global North and the Global South, the First and the Third World, because we were two years behind on our wrestling. Also, the tape of Wrestlemania VI we had was so grainy — it was probably a copy of a copy of a copy — but we all still celebrated when the Ultimate Warrior defeated Hulk Hogan for the championship.

Wrestling also figured in my first brush with disinformation. Months after Wrestlemania VI, news spread across our school that the Ultimate Warrior had died. He used to come to the ring with these tassels wrapped around his biceps, which were just bulging with veins. As the story went, he tried to lift Andre the Giant above his head in a gorilla press, but he had tied his tassels on too tight so the veins in his arms popped, and he bled to death in the ring.

You think the information landscape is terrible now, but we weren’t able to fact-check that story until months later, when someone brought a copy of the WWE Magazine to school. The good news: the story was fake, and the Ultimate Warrior didn’t bleed to death. The bad news: he was attacked by an undead zombie mortician called the Undertaker, who locked the Ultimate Warrior in a coffin where he almost choked to death.

AS I GREW OLDER, wrestling became less fashionable, then weirdly enough, more fashionable, especially when I was in college during the Attitude Era when megastars like Stone Cold Steve Austin and The Rock (before he began making terrible movies) dominated the scene. I’ve dipped in and out, but always remained a fan.

It certainly became easier with the advent of the internet, which allows anyone to find a community of other dorks who still watched wrestling as adults. A few years ago, the WWE even launched its own streaming service that allowed me to watch Wrestlemania live on my laptop. No more two-year wait, no more grainy videotapes.

I’ve also been able to attend my fair share of events in person, even dragging my wife, bless her heart, to come with me. While we were on holiday in London, we went to a wrestling show at a really cool venue called the Electric Ballroom where members of the Sex Pistols once hung out and played shows back in the ‘70s. The show was promoted by a federation called Progress, which branded itself as “punk rock pro wrestling.” I could just imagine the ghost of Sid Vicious turning up at the venue and wondering why there were so many nerds in “Austin 3:16” shirts.

A screenshot of me in London, watching a live wrestling show.

Along the way, I’ve seen a lot of silly stuff. The silliest: Donald Trump would return and fight the owner of the WWE, Vince McMahon, in a Battle of the Billionaires at Wrestlemania 23, and less than 10 years later, he would be elected President of the United States.

Wrestling has gotten more accepted by the mainstream. In fact, in 2016, just before Trump’s election, the New York Times Magazine ran a think piece titled “Is Everything Wrestling?” alluding to the dominance of the fake, performative nature of discourse from politics to corporate communication to the world of popular culture at large.

A few weeks ago, the WWE came to Boston for their Smackdown show. Of course I went (alone, my wife couldn’t say no fast enough), but I didn’t feel the need to broadcast the event to our Nieman chat group, mostly because I wanted my peers to still think of me as a serious person, especially so early in the fellowship year, and watching people fake-fighting in tights still doesn't strike people as a serious activity, even in the year 2023.

A couple of days later, another Nieman fellow asked me why I didn’t make it to dinner that Friday. I sheepishly told him where I’d been.

“Oh man, you should have told me,” he said, sounding genuinely disappointed. “I really would have wanted to go.”

The initial reaction of the public to the GMA announcement of the AI sportscasters was overwhelmingly negative. Most of the criticism focused on the possibility of AI replacing human sports reporters in the future. Among those who added their voice to the chorus were Chino Trinidad and Mark Zambrano, who both previously covered sports for GMA News, and Jamela Alindogan, the longtime international correspondent whose career began as a UAAP courtside reporter. Media veterans including Roby Alampay, Joel Pablo Salud, Boo Chanco, Ann Marie Pamintuan, and Alan Soon all gave thoughtful takes worth reading. The National Union of Journalists of the Philippines called for the start of a conversation, while student organizations from the University of the Philippines and the University of Santo Tomas were more scathing.

Oddly enough, the first story that GMA published in response to the outcry was an article with this headline:

After about a day, the story had been revised to include a more sober title:

In apparent response to the criticism, GMA Network Senior Vice and Head of Integrated News, Regional TV, and Synergy Oliver Victor B. Amoroso: “Maia and Marco are AI presenters, they are not journalists, they can never replace our seasoned broadcasters and colleagues who are the lifeblood of our organization. We are now living in the age of AI and other major news organizations worldwide are already using this as a tool to improve their operations. As the leading news organization in the Philippines, we will constantly look for ways to hone our craft, while preserving the value of our human assets and the integrity of our reporting.”

In talking to former colleagues about the issue, there was a mix of responses. Some were completely surprised by the AI project, while others who worked on it directly said it was always meant to augment and not replace human talents.

What quickly became apparent from all those conversations though was that the organization did not have in place any guidelines for the use of generative AI, either for the newsroom or for editorial products.

Meanwhile, the actual debut of the AI sportscasters was a huge hit on Facebook, drawing more than three million views on the GMA News page, even if the actual video was a bit underwhelming considering all the hype:

The most glaring thing about this video is that this isn’t some dark magic. Everything that you need to generate AI sportscasters is available off the shelf. In fact, you could create your own in about 10 minutes, for less than $20. Why don’t we do that right now?

Let’s create our own AI sportscaster

First, we need to conjure up our sportscaster. We just need him to be handsome, and a sportscaster. I asked Midjourney to create an image for me with the prompt:

a photorealistic image of a handsome Filipino sports reporter

It quickly generated four sample images from that prompt, all of them handsome:

I decided to go with Picture No. 1, so I asked Midjourney for a higher resolution image. Look at our guy!

Next, I logged into the D-ID’s Creative Reality Studio to upload the picture of our handsome Filipino sportscaster.

This tool allows you select which voice model to use for the voiceover. A search for “Philippines” shows there are four voices available: James (English-Philippines), Rosa (English-Philippines), Angelo (Filipino-Philippines), and perhaps the most Pinoy name of all, Blessica (Filipino-Philippines). These are all languages available from Microsoft Azure’s neural text-to-speech (TTS) models: James and Rosa were released in March 2021, while Angelo and Blessica followed suit in November 2021. More curiously, Microsoft makes it easy for companies to create custom voices for their brands.

I type in a few quick words for the script. D-ID does all the hard work of animating the picture we uploaded. I click “Generate Video,” and voila:

The hardest part of the whole thing is keying in your credit card number to pay for the services. A subscription to Midjourney (which I’ve been using to generate images for FireQuinito.com) costs $10 a month, while the most basic plan for for D-ID’s Creative Reality Studio costs just $5.90 a month. It was so easy, you’d realize that having AI sportscasters isn’t quite the flex it was intended to be.

But there’s a larger point here. The fact that the technology is already here, accessible to everyone, only underscores how important it is that media organizations to have official guidelines on the role of AI in newsroom processes and editorial product, to figure out what would be acceptable use and to serve as guardrails for what wouldn’t.

No, AI-generated reporters won’t be replacing your favorite news personalities anytime soon, but here are some examples to think about that could happen tomorrow. But now, they’re all complicated by the fact that the company went ahead and rolled out the release of AI sportcasters without thinking of implications.

Case 1: Digital Voices

GMA News (and other outlets) publish a lot of short-form digital videos. To save on time and costs, these digital videos usually include text captions instead of voiceovers.

But now that we know we could generate voiceovers in Filipino using TTS models, would that be acceptable use of AI? Note that no one would lose their job in this scenario. And besides, you’ve already used AI sportscasters, so why couldn’t you use AI voiceovers for these digital videos?

But then, on YouTube, there are hundreds of videos that use generated voiceovers too. If you use off-the-shelf TTS voices like Angelo or Blessica, your videos might sound like everyone else’s videos; it would make it very easy for bad actors to mimic your content. Would you then train a new model to sound unique? How would you train that voice model? Would you be transparent about whose voices you used to train the model?

Say you now have a voice model specifically for use of digital videos that used to not have any voiceovers. Like any responsible media organization, you label all the videos you publish that use this AI voice model.

Then you realize that you have other digital video products that only have voiceovers and not on-camera talent. An example: Need to Know, an explanatory journalism series produced for the web.

The voiceover work, in this case, usually takes up additional time for the producers of the video. Would it then be acceptable to use the AI voice model? Would your answer be different for video projects that pay separately for voice talents?

Case 2: Translating from the Regions

GMA has a bunch of regional newscasts, where reporters file their stories in their native language.

Everyday, a handful of stories from these newscasts make it to the main national lineup. The regional reporter would then have to translate their script into Tagalog, record the new voiceover, add subtitles, and basically recreate the report.

This is a long and tedious process. In the example above, the story came out on the regional One Western Visayas newscast on Friday and the national Balita Ko newscasts on Monday. AI could certainly help speed things up.

You could use ChatGPT to translate the script from Hiligaynon to Tagalog, but of course, you need to make sure the output is checked by a human being. You’d also want the original reporter to do the voiceover for the national newscast.

But what about all the other stories from the regional newscast that is published on the web in their original language? Would you consider using AI voiceover translations for those videos to reach a wider audience? You already rolled out AI sportscasters, so why not AI translations.

But why should the translated voiceovers sound like randos. Wouldn’t it be better if they sounded like the original reporters? Would you develop voice models using reporters? Spotify and YouTube are already testing out similar technology.

Suppose you’re fine with that; it’s only for online anyway. Now what if big news breaks and you need to get the story from the regional newscast into a breaking news bulletin ASAP. The regional reporter is not immediately available. Would you use the AI voiceover?

Case 3: Evening News Rush

It’s 5:30 p.m. and all the editing bays are at full swing for the 6:30 p.m. newscast. A reporter has sent the script for their big story ready for voiceover, but still needs to confirm a key detail. The newsdesk finally gets the confirmation, but now the reporter could not be reached because they’re in a remote area. Thankfully, we now have an AI model for the reporter’s voice (they’ve been using it for translated voiceovers for online videos). The story is in danger of being dropped if the video editor doesn’t get working on it soon. Can you use AI to voice their report?

Case 4: Podcast Ad Reader

The Howie Severino Podcast draws a lot of interest from advertisers. Howie Severino never reads ads himself because that would be a conflict, but the advertiser is a really big fan. They ask that their ad be read by someone who reminds people of Howie. Can you use AI to do that?

These are just some examples I came up with off the top of my head — I’m sure there are many, many more. Some of them have obvious answers, while others may be more complicated. I hope this helps push forward the conversation about AI in the newsroom not just for GMA, but for all news outlets in our country.

It’s a conversation that needs to reach beyond just the newsroom. While editors and media managers have their hearts in the right place, many of them are as an editor-friend put it, “plainly ill-equipped to handle that process.” The discussion needs to happen across the organization, and should involve technology managers, human resource officials, and even owners.

Make no mistake, it’s a conversation that’s going to happen in other companies across the country and the world too. But media organizations have an outsized role to play in the discourse of AI because we are in the business of building trust with our audiences, which begins with trust with our own people.

The veteran thespian was recruited, along with other theater regulars, for the gig by their comrade Noel Mallonga,2 who was in charge of recording English language audio suitable for Pinoy kids.

Joonee had played three parts in the original series: Dr. Smith, the first mentor of the Voltes team; Dr. Hook, who would replace Dr. Smith as the man in the chair for the group; and the villainous Duke Zaki.

During his Malcon panel,3 Joonee was asked to recite lines from his original English recordings of Voltes V.

“This is no longer a practice, get all missiles before they strike our camp. Prepare to launch immediately!” the actor boomed in an American accent, before explaining how he was picked to portray the venerable Dr. Smith because his voice, even then, had a grizzled, authoritative quality.4

Next, Joonee was asked to read a line by Duke Zaki, a minor villain that appears later in the series. For his reading, the actor affected an accent that he described as a cross between French and German. “In fact, you have been appointed by the emperor to spy on Prince Zardoz on zis mission. He hoped Prince Zardoz will meet his death on earth,” the traitorous Zaki told Zuul.

In the panel, Jonee revealed it was his choice to give the character an odd accent, figuring someone from out of this world deserved an out-of-this-world affectation too. He chose the European flavor after taking a look at the duke’s regal get-up.

VOLTES V WAS A SURPRISE HIT ON PHILIPPINE TELEVISION, in large part because it was never a huge hit anywhere else, least of all in its native Japan. It was part of a group of anime series nicknamed the Robot Romance Trilogy, along with other titles Combattler V and Daimos, which also became a hit in the Philippines.

The Robot Romance Trilogy shows are just some of the dozens of entries in the genre of the Super Robot5 — giant machines that would transform to fight invading monsters, usually aliens, under the control of youthful heroes.

The big kahuna of super robots was Mazinger Z. While some older Filipino fans would remember that series as the precursor to Voltes V, it was actually the seminal manga and anime that would launch dozens of imitators.

In “Loving the Machine: The Art and Science of Japanese Robots,” author Timothy N. Hornyak wrote that the popularity of Mazinger Z spawned numerous imitations — “by the mid-1980s, over 40 different giant robot shows had appeared” — with many of the series being thinly-disguised advertising for toy lines. He mentions several notable copycats, like Brave Raideen, Combattler V, and Dangard Ace.

The absence of Voltes V from that list becomes immediately conspicuous to any Filipino reader. But looking at the artwork of Combattler V, it quickly become apparent why Voltes V wouldn’t even merit a mention. It’s heartbreaking, but placed in historical context and viewed side-by-side with its direct predecessor, what was a seminal series to many generations of Filipinos suddenly seems like a copycat of a copycat.

Hornyak quotes anime critic Fred Patten’s observation that the anime plots of these series are “metaphors for refighting World War II to defend Japan (and Japanese cultural traditions) against the invading armies of Western social influences. So while Voltes V was apparently not significant enough to warrant a mention in Hornyak’s book, it doesn’t take much therapy to see how it conforms to Patten’s observation about the WWII metaphor.

Voltes V, in its original incarnation, featured a team of Japanese heroes defending the Pacific theater against electromagnetic monsters sent by invaders led by an evil blonde prince. The only way it could have been more on the nose would be if Zuul had been named Oppenheimer.

But of course, Japanese psychosocial theater wouldn’t exactly play well with young Filipino audiences, so tweaks to the anime were in order. That was how the Goh brothers became the Armstrong trio: Kenichi turned into Steve, Daijiro into Big Bert, and Hiyoshi into Little John. The lethal ninja Megumi Oka turned into Jamie Robinson, the enigmatic rodeo champion Ippei Mine into Mark Gordon. Even the blonde bastard prince went from being the Aryan-sounding Heinel to being Zardoz, which sounds vaguely Spanish.

Now it was Filipino psychosocial theater on display. Imagine they could have turned their heroes into anything, and they turned them into… Americans.6

But the Filipino production and the voice actors like Joonee Gamboa somehow made it work. From the start, the series had a magical bond with the Filipino audience. By now, its story is the stuff of legend: the series was such a hit on GMA-7 before it was abruptly taken off air, supposedly because censors within the Marcos dictatorship deemed the series too violent for children. Conspiracy theorists have held that it was canceled because of revolutionary overtones, but cast members seem to believe the reason wasn’t quite so complicated: Voltes V’s high ratings were supposedly too high for rival networks controlled by Marcos cronies, who asked for it to be stricken off the air.

But it obviously stayed in the consciousness of Filipinos long after its original broadcast. Voltes V would later air with Tagalog dubs, and would become weekend morning staples for generations upon generations of young Filipino viewers. In the ‘90s, GMA-7 even tried airing it on prime time television as counterprogramming. Not bad for what was once a copycat of a copycat.

The network, of course, would later embark on an ambitious project to turn the anime into a live action series. Skeptics were doubtful about whether a Philippine TV station would be able to pull it off, and when the graphics looked great, many online pundits attributed it to the work of Japanese producers. Except they were wrong: it was talented Filipino animators who lovingly crafted the imagery in tribute to the series they’ve loved since they were kids. The volt in sequence would give the chills to anyone who grew up watching the anime. Truth is, only Pinoy artists working under a Pinoy company could have pulled it off because no one else in the world cared as much about the project or the property.

Of course, adapting the series to live action also meant that the characters would be played by local actors. For better or worse, Steve, Big Bert, Little John, Mark, and Jamie — despite their surnames (or alien lineage) — were now finally Filipino.

Which is how it should be. Like the robot for which it is named, the series may have had alien origins, but it was always the Filipino bits that made Voltes V special.

Midjourney: “A young black Filipino girl with short curly hair playing soccer against a Japanese super robot in the style of '70s anime”

LAST MONTH, ANOTHER GROUP OF HEROES WITH FOREIGN SURNAMES made headlines, when the Philippine women’s national football team defeated host New Zealand at the 2023 FIFA Women’s World Cup. It was the first victory for the country —men or women — at the highest level of football competition in the world.

Fittingly, it was Sarina Bolden who scored the first-ever goal for the Philippines in the World Cup. After all, it was a penalty kick from the talismanic striker against Chinese Taipei that punched the country’s ticket to the World Cup last year. Beyond that, she has been the team’s vocal leader on and off the pitch.

After the game, Sarina would deflect a lot of the credit to her teammates. “I’m really happy and proud that I could do that for Philippine soccer, and it doesn’t happen because of me. It happens (because of) this whole team. My teammates, staff, the admin.”

The composition of that team was the subject of much interest. In my post about the women’s squad last month, published on July 18, I had noted that there had already been a well-established pipeline for members of the Filipino diaspora to represent the country: “For more than a decade now, the people working with the women’s team have been building bridges to allow women footballers from around the world to suit up.”

This year’s edition of the Women’s World Cup had unprecedented media interest, a testament to the growth of the sport, and that spotlight found the Philippine team even before their historic feat. On July 20, Yahoo! Sports published an in-depth report by Henry Bushnell called “The making of America’s other Women’s World Cup team: The Philippines.”7

It was an excellent piece with an unfortunate title, because it reported in fabulous detail the painstaking work that went into building the pipeline that connected football players of Filipino lineage to the women’s national football team. It brought into the forefront the sacrifice of everyone involved, from supporters to officials to players, to make it happen — this wasn’t some instant overnight team.

Even before their match against New Zealand, head coach Alen Stajcic was already pushing back against any criticism about the team’s composition. “If they have Philippines in their heart and in their blood, and they’re good at football, then they’re eligible for our team. They all play for their flag, they all play for their country, they all play for the people in the Philippines, wherever they reside.”

That didn’t stop the reactionary takes about the team of “imported players” even after their big win. One reader wrote in a letter to the editor of SunStar: “If you represent a country, you should at least have been born there. If not, you should have lived in that country for a minimum of five years, enough to have learned a little bit of the language and the local culture. Also, it would help to have a familiar-sounding last name.” To be fair, the reader Leah Coronel cast a wide net, saying beauty queens with foreign sounding names such as Pia Wurtzbach and Catriona Gray shouldn’t have represented the Philippines either, saying “it’s very misleading to the rest of the world who might now think that all Filipinas look like” those Miss Universe titleholders.

Leah Coronel may have been more militant than most, but hers is a common sentiment among many Filipinos.

It doesn’t help that for the longest time, there would always be pushback against Filipinos taking ownership and making space for ourselves. It dates back to our colonial history and affects the way we look at the world even today.

True, there are always the people who would comment “Proud to be Pinoy!” whenever there’s someone with even a smidgen of Filipino blood on the world stage. But honestly, you’re just as likely to encounter obnoxious posts like, “Proud to be Pinoy comments in 3, 2, 1…” preemptively mocking those who would even think to comment something about their perceived kabayan, like How dare you claim this for the Philippines, who do you think you are? Like we don’t deserve things and that we should know our place.

But then, why couldn’t we claim things for the Philippines? Lord knows throughout our history, foreigners have been claiming what is ours to be theirs, leaving our forebearers disadvantaged and marginalized, often in systemic ways that still affect many of us today.

Why does everything have to be foreign, and only foreign, by default, like the Voltes V Armstrong brothers? It’s not like we’d be claiming anything we don’t deserve. Take Sarina Bolden. Yes, she wouldn’t have been as good a footballer if she hadn’t been American. But there are thousands of very good footballers from California, where soccer is the No. 1 youth sport among girls. If she’d never played for us, Sarina Bolden would never have become a World Cup legend. Like Voltes V, her origins might be alien, but it’s the Filipino bits that made her special, transforming her from just another player into an icon whose name is forever etched in the annnals of football history.

POSTSCRIPT

Sports always tends to bring up matters of race, citizenship, and lineage. The discussion is always fraught, but the Philippines is hardly alone in dealing with these issues. The emergence of hafu athletes like Rui Hachimura and Naomi Osaka have forced Japan to confront its silent xenophobia. Discussions about France’s immigration policy, diversity, and even its colonist past always come up whenever there are big sporting competitions, complete with ignorant trolling and thoughtful athlete responses.

If it feels like we’ve been having this same conversation about race in Philippine sports, it’s because we have. And that’s a good thing, because all those conversations have helped many fans mature and understand what goes behind the composition of the teams.

It may not seem like it, but honestly, I think it’s part of the reason why the Philippine women’s national football team hasn’t gotten as much shit as other teams have in the past — from the Fil-Ams in the PBA to the Europeans on the Azkals.

I was running the original incarnation of FireQuinito.com when the Azkals emerged on the scene in 2011. The late Ronnie Nathanielsz, the former Marcos propagandist turned sports executive, once wrote a stunningly ignorant column using the success of the national men’s football team to take shots at Filipino-Americans:

The other key factor, we believe, is the character of the players who are mostly from Europe and have imbibed a different culture from the Filipino-Americans who demonstrate their skill in the PBA. ... In a British educational system which brothers Philip and James Younghusband and Chris Greatwich surely enjoyed, they teach young men to first and foremost be gentlemen.

In America, from what we know, the accent is on how to get ahead and do well financially. Nothing intrinsically wrong with that except that the difference is eventually palpable and being suddenly exposed to Fil-Europeans ... our fans have warmed to the difference.

That earned a lengthy rebuke from Rafe Bartholomew, which I published on the blog in 2011. In his post, Rafe had a prescient line:

Perceptions change over time, and the media, in constant search of storylines, can turn on athletes, especially those born or raised outside of the Philippines.

Indeed, the public’s honeymoon with the Azkals didn’t last too long. The very next year, the team was caught in a firestorm after former Philippine Olympic Committee chief Christy Ramos accused a couple of members of the team of harassment. That led to controversial comments from GMA News anchor Arnold Clavio on “Unang Hirit” calling the Azkals fake Filipinos who were only pretending to be brown.

There were many, many takes on the issue, most of them terrible. I was working for the website InterAksyon.com at the time, where we decided to take the crisis as an opportunity for a series of discussion pieces asking, “What’s a Filipino?”

The very best of those pieces came courtesy of Alex Compton, the American former basketball player and coach. I remember sitting down with him for coffee before a PBA game, and the conversation was so insightful I decided to turn the interview into a piece.

ARNOLD CLAVIO’S STATEMENTS MAY NOT BE APPROPRIATE but they’re common sentiments. The issue of Filipino identity is an argument with many different sides; hindi ito black-and-white, multi-faceted tayo dito eh. It depends on how you turn it, you’re gonna see a lot of different angles, and there’s legitimacy to many of the arguments.

Sa akin, one of the things I believe for many of the Fil-Ams coming here, I would hope that they’d be humble, accept their blessing and understand that it’s a blessing, and treat people with respect. Even if you’re part-whatever, dapat lang may respeto. It’s just basic human dignity, that people treat each other with respect.

And I would hope, for a lot of Fil-Ams coming over, they would slowly — or quickly, I guess, depending on the person — learn about Filipino culture, understanding the nation, understand concepts like “sama ng loob,” “utang na loob,” intricacies like delicadeza, things that you don’t initially get because they’re not in the culture you’re originally coming from.

On the flipside, overseas Filipino workers are heroes in so many ways. I can’t tell you how many friends have studied because Tita, who’s in the U.S., put them through school, or Tito, who’s been in Saudi for ten years, built this house — and he doesn’t really want to be in Saudi, but he wants to provide for his family. And how many billions of dollars are generated from OFWs who are trying to help their countrymen?

Now their kids, sino ba sila? When they’re in the U.S., they call these kids Filipino, but in the Philippines, they’re called American. They’d be like, “I’m not anything, anywhere. The law says I’m Filipino, and the law says I’m also American. But you’re always looking at the negative side.”

I do hope things never take a sour turn for Sarina Bolden and the heroes of the Philippine women’s national football team. And I do hope that they have the opportunity to take the prescription of Alex Compton for foreign-born Filipinos.

But if things ever do take a downturn for the Filipinas, I am hopeful that we would be able to handle the conversation with more nuance and thought than we have in the past.

Park Street Church. Photo: Jaemark Tordecilla

I’ve been working on an essay that I had hoped to publish before our big life move, but I wasn’t able to get it done because of the last few weeks just became too crazy. We’re a week into settling into a new city and we’ve started doing the whole touristy thing, but I’m hoping to carve out some time soon to be able to get back into the writing groove for FireQuinito.com.

Anyway, I just wanted to share a quick story that isn't about sports, but is very interesting. This afternoon, we were doing the self-guided walking tour of the Freedom Trail, and one of the stops was the Park Street Church, which Henry James1 once called “the most interesting mass of bricks and mortars in America.” The church hosted scholars, philosophers, abolitionists, and many other great men, but in the audio guide of the National Parks Service, it made sure to mention a notable woman who once spoke at the venue: Clemencia Lopez, a woman from the Philippines who addressed the New England Woman’s Suffrage Association in 1902 asking for their support against American imperialism in the Philippines. The guide quoted the powerful words to end her address: “After all, you ought to understand that we are only contending for the liberty of our country, just as you once fought for the liberty of yours.”

The whole essay is online, and is worth reading.

I’d never heard of this story, which is sad and also sadly quite common. Spending time in a city that cares so much about their history alwasy fills me with jealousy and underscores how much we need to tell our histories better.

It did, at least, put me into a Google rabbit hole about the life of Clemencia Lopez. The historian Laura R. Prieto2 has written a journal article on Clemencia, which has been summarized neatly in this short feature.

Midjourney: “Faith, love, time, and Donita Rose”

AS THE LARGEST CHRISTIAN NATION in Asia, you’d figure that in a given day in the Philippines, there would be thousands, maybe millions of young voices saying a prayer for a shot to make their showbiz dreams come true.

To hear Donita Rose tell it, her entertainment career also began with a prayer, but it was much more interesting than that.

Describing herself as “a very American girl from Clark,” she was 15 years old when she was busted by her parents for smoking marijuana. “That was the first time I had ever tried it. And I got caught on the first try.”

That would be bad for any set of parents, but it was especially so for Donita’s: her dad was an American airman, her mom a Filipino who taught at one of those schools for US military brats. To scare her straight, they sent Donita to the emergency room at Clark Air Base, where she chanced upon a dramatic scene of a wife crying beside her husband’s gurney.

“I don’t know if I was high or something like that,” she tells me with a laugh during our Zoom conversation. “But I was contemplating life and I was very reflective of what I did.”

Donita remembers saying a prayer, asking God to help her find a purpose in life.

That prayer would be answered three days later, in the form of, oddly enough, Randy Santiago.1

The Cavett family2 had gone to Manila for a December shopping trip and decided to make a detour to Broadway Centrum to watch “Lunch Date,”3 the GMA noontime show at the time. Donita made her way through the cramped Broadway bleachers with her friend Sandra, a blonde and blue-eyed girl from the air base. “At first the cameras focused on us as we walked into the audience area, because it was like a novelty thing to see Americans4 come into the studio,” Donita says. Reacting swiftly, Randy Santiago quipped, “Ah dumating na ang siyota ko!” (My girlfriend is here!) to the delight of the crowd.

After the show, Donita’s mom would thank the cameraman for focusing on her daughter. The man told her mom, “You should watch a show later called ‘That’s Entertainment.’ Your daughter would probably enjoy it because she’s a teenager.”

Donita, the American girl from Clark, had no idea what That’s Entertainment was, but they all went back that afternoon anyway to see what was up. During the show, she found herself under the spotlight once again. This time, teen heartthrob Romnick Sarmienta made his way to their seats to start serenading Donita and her friend with a song number.

“After singing, he said, ‘You see that guy on stage? That’s German Moreno. He discovers talents, and he’d like to know if you want to join the show.’” Donita looked back at her mom, who was eagerly giving her the thumbs up sign.

“So I just looked back and said, OK. That was it.”

DONITA STILL HAD to sing “Radio Romance,” the Tiffany song, for her audition — “And I was really terrible!” — but the star builder behind That’s Entertainment seemed determined to bring her into the fold.

“Kuya Germs asked me, ‘Do you have any talent?’ ‘No.’ ‘Do you speak Tagalog?’ ‘No.’ ‘So what can you do?’ ‘I don’t know.’ And he said, ‘OK, you’re in.’”

She and her brother made it, and were assigned to the Friday group, which allowed them to travel to Manila from Clark at the end of each week so they could be on the show on Friday and for the Saturday competitions.

They would take part in live workshops on television, doing segments like “That’s News,” where they would try to become news anchors; “That’s Modeling,” which allows the members to walk the stage like a runway, and also doubles as a way for them to thank their hair, makeup, and clothing sponsors on the show; “That’s Acting,” where Kuya Germs shows a clip from a movie that’s out in the theaters, and the members would act it all out; and of course, the usual singing and dancing.

Donita quickly found a niche. “Since I was very Americanized, I’d like to think that I was one of the pioneers of hiphop dancing in the Philippines,” she says. Record labels record would hire her to perform with dance groups like Hot Legs on variety shows like “Eat Bulaga” and “GMA Supershow” to promote their latest dance singles.

But Donita’s real claim to fame — “for the wrong reasons,” she adds — is her acting in the workshops.

“We would be given a few minutes during the commercial break to memorize a dialogue. And then we’d have to do heavy drama, and then recite the lines and you know, act out some famous scene from a movie,” Donita recalls.

“Since I couldn’t speak Tagalog, I’d have to beg someone next to me and say, ‘Help me with this.’ They were trying to teach me what the lines mean in, like, five minutes,” she adds.

Soon enough, it would become her trademark on the show.

“My brother and I were the last, we were always the last because it’s always funny. I would try so hard!” she says, but it never worked. “I’d say my lines and like, people would have no idea what I’m saying. But to them, it’s really funny.”

Her brother would eventually quit showbiz, but Donita’s angelic face soon paved the way for movie roles. She bagged a couple of lead parts, as well as prominent roles as the leading lady in action films. But producers quickly realized that she was too quirky for the much older action stars, so in subsequent films she would end up being paired with the comedic sidekick instead, allowing Donita to stretch her chops some more.

Comedy also allowed her to thrive on the fiesta circuit. While That’s Entertainment mainstays were paid only a small stipend to appear on the show, the television exposure made them coveted guests at fiestas in remote towns, where organizers were willing to pay them tens of thousands of pesos for a handful of song and dance numbers.

“I would go and get the shyest person in the crowd, in tsinelas and sando,” Donita says. “And I would serenade him tapos lalandian ko siya. And the crowd would go crazy!”

Her comedic timing would eventually lead to her role as Barbie Doll Dinero in the classic sitcom “Ober Da Bakod.”

“I never intended to be a comedian,” she says, laughing. “That’s just kinda how it happened.”

UNTIL THAT POINT in her career, Donita was just going with the flow. That was until a spot for the new MTV VJ opened up. She knew, more than anything, that this was the opportunity for her.

She remembers walking at a mall in Makati with her friend Mo Twister when she saw a poster for the audition. “I literally wanted to rip it and pull it down so that nobody else would see it. Because this was mine. That's what I wanted to do.”

And she was right: the American girl, honed for years on Philippine television, was perfect for the gig.

As a VJ on MTV, Donita’s broadcasts were beamed throughout Southeast Asia and large parts of China, making her a heartthrob and a television icon to millions of teenagers across a big swath of the world.

Behind the scenes, Donita’s rise to international superstardom coincided — though, as a woman of faith, she probably wouldn’t characterize it that way — with her decision to dedicate her life to God.

“There was a lot of things that I’ve done in my life up until I was 23, you know, things that were bad and I regreted. And I think there was a lot of maturity that took place before MTV happened, which made me realize that if I get this opportunity, I’m not screwing this up,” she says. “I'm not messing around, I'm not going to party anymore. I'm just going to focus on God.”

So while VJ Donita was tearing it up on our television screens, Donita took the opportunity go in person on faith-based mission trips, speaking at school campuses and other places all around the region. “And my thing was, ‘Lord, use me use me in a seemingly secular place for Your Kingdom.’”

LEAVING MTV AFTER SIX YEARS was a bittersweet decision for Donita Rose. She hesitates a bit before, in a moment of candor I’ve never experienced in all my years interviewing celebrities, she opened up about the exact reason why she left.

“I met somebody. He became the love of my life back then. And I thought it was time to get married. I was 29 years old, and I wanted to wait until marriage before sex. So we were kind of in a hurry both to get married and have sex,” she says.

The choice had been clear in her mind: “Either I stay with MTV and I sin, I fall for this guy, I end up having sex with him and I’m gonna regret it. Or by faith, I leave the job of my dreams and trust that God is in control.”

That faith would be tested during Donita’s marriage to her first husband Eric Villarama, which would end after a decade and a half in a very public and a very ugly manner. In a 2018 episode of the ABS-CBN daytime talk show “Magandang Buhay,” Donita basically detailed the story of how she caught her husband cheating on her.

One would certainly understand if Donita lost a little faith after her ordeal, and she admits that after her marriage ended, “I was very depressed for a while.”

It didn’t help that there was this constant reminder to her from fans about what she had given up just to be with the man who would end up betraying her trust and breaking her heart. Every so often, someone would come up to Donita and tell her, without any hint of irony or self-awareness, “Alam mo, paborito kita nu’ng sikat ka pa.”

She has learned to take it in stride, joking that if she ever had the time, “I would write a book about how to go from being popular to to unpopular.”

When Donita tells me these things, she says them as a matter of fact, with neither bitterness nor strain in her voice. Her faith helps, of course.

“It doesn’t hurt me because I know where I stand, I am who I am,” she says. “Whether I’m popular or not popular, whether I’m rich and poor, I am secure. I am a child of God.”

DONITA ROSE MOVED BACK to the United States at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, when showbiz opportunities in Manila had dried up and, she admits, “I didn’t really know what I was going to do with my life.”

“You know, I did have a failed marriage and I thought at some point that my reputation and my identity is ruined, only to realize that God had so much more in store for me,” she says.

She found a new career as a corporate chef, a natural fit for someone who’s always been passionate about cooking and who spent her MTV years traveling all over Asia and sampling the cuisine of the region. She chuckles at my question when I use the term “reinvention” to describe the new chapter of her life.

“I laugh at the term reinvention, kind of like, you know how Madonna always reinvented herself. I always did it out necessity, kind of like, you know, to try to plan ahead and think, you know, how can I make ends meet? Especially when people would always say, you know, beauty doesn’t last forever. And, you know, you're only good as good as your last project. So I was always kind of trying to look ahead, like, ‘OK, what am I going to do with my life?’”

Moving back to the States also allowed her to spend more time with her family, especially her teenage son JP, who recently graduated from high school.

Donita also found new love in the person of Felson Palad, a gospel singer who shared both her passion and her faith. They married last September and have started an entertainment company called Talents Expo, an allusion to the biblical parable of talents.

“We produce many concerts and events, and we have a lot of fun,” Donita says. She has even gone back to her performing roots. “He’ll ask me to sing a song and I’ll do a little bit of comedy here and there. It’s wonderful. It feels like playtime everyday, it doesn’t feel like we’re working.”

Donita hopes to return to Philippine television soon. “I've been working on my health and dieting and exercise and eventually going into the acting realm again,” she says.

When she returns, she figures, everything she had gone through would actually help her.

“All of the heartaches and pains that I've experienced since then, have made me a better actor,” she says. “Marami nang hugot.”

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4

It’s still a thing in this century! It’s why Rafe Bartholomew, the author of the seminal book on Philippine basketball, always somehow ends up dancing on Eat Bulaga whenever he attends the show.

Midjourney: “A beautiful witch playing soccer in the style of Andy Warhol with red and blue as the main colors”

In the television show “Community,” Greendale Community College’s hapless Dean Craig Pelton needed a bit of help with the school’s new mascot.1 The school’s athletic teams had previously been known as the Greendale Grizzlies, but because, Dean Pelton says in a hushed tone, “a lot of these students have been called animals their whole lives,” they’ve decided on a new team nickname that no one could possibly find offensive.

“The team’s name is the Human Beings?!”2

That scene flashed before my eyes when I first heard news last year that the Philippine Women’s National Football Team would be replacing their nickname, from the Malditas to the… Filipinas.

The team’s braintrust had long signaled that a change was in order. In October 2021, then-coach Marlon Maro3 had expressed his desire to change the team’s nickname because his players are “beautiful, they are good, they are intelligent, and they are very disciplined,” adding that he didn’t like the Malditas nickname because “that doesn’t represent the beauty of being a Filipina.”

He said it was his own opinion, but added: “Now that I am back in the women's team, I told the team that we have to stop using this Maldita word.”

Maro would not be at the helm for long, as the national team would welcome former Australia women’s coach Alen Stajcic into the fold. It was certainly a coup, as Stajcic is credited as the architect behind the rise of Australia (nicknamed the Matildas, interestingly) into the No. 5 women’s football nation in the world.

Under Stajcic, the team went on its dream run in the AFC Women’s Asian Cup in India, where they reached the semifinals to punch a ticket to this year’s FIFA Women’s World Cup. During that run, one Spanish-speaking fan called Las Malditas “el mejor apodo del mundo” — the best nickname in the world.

But the train had apparently left the station because a couple of months after that historic achievement, the team’s management released a statement officially changing the team’s nickname.

In the press release, team manager Jeff Cheng4 said the new nickname was chosen for being “simple and nationalistic.” The Philippine Football Federation, for its part, said “all relevant parties” agreed that it was “not appropriate” for the team to play in the FIFA Women’s World Cup while using the Malditas nickname that supposedly has “negative connotations in large parts of the world.”5

In his World Cup preview for the Philippine team, Tom Ley of the sports website Defector rued the name change. “The Filipinas sound like a team that's eager to meet their opponents in a fair and honorable athletic competition designed to enrich the spirits of all those who take part. But the Malditas? That sounds like a squad of 11 freaks who are going to drag you onto a lake of fire and leave you there to burn. I know which one I'd rather root for.”

At this point in the essay so far, all of the voices we’ve heard about the issue (including mine) belong to men, which (spoiler alert) gets to the point I’m trying to make. I asked a couple of women who follow football closely about what they thought about the name change issue.

Mika Palileo, a communications expert who contributed football essays when I ran the InterAksyon.com sports website,6 felt that the new nickname is generic (“because duh”).

“Malditas had the bite, befitting of a team that have defied the odds to stand on world football’s biggest stage,” Mika said. “I have no idea what happened behind the scenes, but from an outside observer’s perspective, it feels like a case of losing certain contexts of what ‘Malditas’ could mean. As a ‘Maldita,’ it’s a word that can mean a girl who will make it a point to get what she wants — and I would have loved for the team to have retained that power word.”

Meanwhile, Camille Naredo, the longtime sports journalist from ABS-CBN, said she is “mostly ambivalent” about the name change, understanding the reason for it while hoping the team had picked a more unique moniker.

“Honestly I really liked the ‘Malditas’ moniker in the first place. I like that it was something you need to explain to non-Filipinos and I like the implication of the name itself. It also felt somewhat unique and in a way, kind of reclaiming the negative sentiment of the term and turning it into something positive,” Camille said.

She was charitable about the motivations of team management about why it was not quite working for the squad. “I also understood why Coach Maro felt the need to push for the change, precisely because of that negative connotation. Maybe they were getting tired of explaining what it means and they figured that they wanted to use a term that's more easily recognizable,” Camille added.

I would have loved to ask the current players about their thought on the issue, but they probably have better things to do than answer silly questions on the eve of the biggest tournament of their lives.

But the previous generation of national women footballers certainly loved the name. In 2011, I ran this essay on InterAksyon.com written by Belay Fernando,7 who at the time played defense for the Malditas, defending why the name had been chosen in the first place:

For the longest time, our country has worshipped basketball, a game played from barangay half-courts to the Big Dome. Lately, football has stolen some of the attention of our hoops-loving masses.

The Philippine national football team has gained popularity beyond the dreams of the local football community. With their success, the Azkals have made the sport seemingly attainable to all — even to the female populace.

But in every country, in every sport, female athletes have always experienced a double standard. They are either deemed just another pretty face before even stepping on to the playing field, or they are considered too manly to be a woman.

This same double standard also exists in football, a sport that involves too much contact, roughness, and stamina. And the same double standard exists for members of the Philippine national women’s football team — the Malditas.

The nickname has been controversial, with many criticisms thrown its way. But for us, the nickname represents the evolution of the beautiful, modern Filipina — an evolution not necessarily understood by everyone.

The “mal” in maldita means “bad” in Spanish. The term refers to someone mean, perverse or wicked; loose of tongue; or one who speaks her mind freely.

The last definition fits the national women’s football team well — we are women who came together to redefine norms.

Everyday, we go against everyone thinking that we can’t enjoy the same success on the pitch. We fight our battles in training, push ourselves beyond what we can do, and when training ends and the clock hits 8 a.m., we head to the locker rooms and face the world as beautiful, confident women ready to go about our day.

Some head to school for a full day of classes, before another training session with respective varsity teams. Some go to work or attend to other commitments.

We work hard in preparation for the day we represent our country in Laos for the ASEAN Football Federation Women’s Championships this September. But we also work hard to achieve something beyond our football careers.

Despite the lack of support and the lack of cheers, we keep going. In some ways, we were brave enough to answer the call to represent our country. We, the so-called Malditas, make do with what we have to try to create a team everyone can believe in.

And despite all the criticism, we go about our days with smiles. Smiles that say: Say what you must, I am a Maldita who fights till she gets what she wants. And if I were you, I would definitely be on my side because we are out to defy odds and conquer the world.

Midjourney: “A portrait of football coach Alen Stajcic in the style of palette knife art with red and blue as the main colors”

UNLESS YOU WERE A HARDCORE FAN, you probably didn’t care or even know about the name change, which speaks to how little public attention is directed at Philippine women’s football. It’s par for the course for a country obsessed with basketball.

The original run of the FireQuinito.com blog coincided with the rise of the Azkals in the Miracle of Hanoi in 2010, when the Philippine men’s national football team reached the semifinals of the AFF Suzuki Cup for the first time. The success of the Azkals led to so many casual fans calling for Filipinos to support the game instead of basketball.

In my essay “Why Football Needs Our Love,” I pushed back on the idea that football would lead to more sporting glory for the Philippines, noting the poor record of Southeast Asian teams even at the Asian level.

The fact is it’s very hard to build an internationally successful program in football. Assuming that the Philippines would shoot up the rankings “if only we tried,” as some fans and announcers keep harping, isn’t just inaccurate; at best, it’s ignorant and naïve, and at worst, it’s jingoistic, and it’s disrespectful of our neighbors who give their heart and soul for the sport, for whom football is part of the fabric of their culture.

Later in the essay, I made the case that there needs to be stronger support for football in the country anyway.

Faced with these facts, then, we need to flip conventional wisdom on its head: If we want to keep winning medals in international team competition, we must continue to concentrate of basketball.

The key here, of course, is that winning medals shouldn’t be the only reason for us to fall in love with a sport, and winning shouldn’t be a prerequisite for us to embrace football. After all, football is a sport worthy of affection in and of itself; it’s called the beautiful game for very good reason, and in precious moments, it lives up to its lofty moniker, with its unique rhythm and its opera of goals and near-misses. Furthermore, it’s a sport that allows us to commune with the rest of the world, to speak their language on the pitch, and to learn more about our neighbors. Whether we win or we lose, football deserves our love.

Since I wrote that essay nearly 13 years ago, in fact, the Philippines has competed twice in two World Cup tournaments for basketball. Meanwhile, journalists are writing pieces titled “Is Southeast Asian Football Finally On The Cusp Of Success?” because teams from Vietnam and Thailand “advanced deeper into the qualifying rounds than most Southeast Asian nations had previously gone.” Vietnam8 became the first ASEAN team to win a match in the last round qualifiers for the 2022 FIFA World Cup. They finished the round with a win — a 3-1 banger over China — a draw, and eight defeats.

The funny thing is, all those things I wrote about the men’s side? That doesn’t apply to the Philippine women’s national football team. There’s no loveable loser bullshit about these women. We could go a lifetime without seeing the Azkals compete in the World Cup, while Las Malditas Filipinas could be mainstays in that tournament for years to come.

This is a golden opportunity. The Philippine Football Federation scored a coup in signing Stajcic, one of the best minds in the sport, to take over the program. You know how Pinoy basketball fans always fantasize about Erik Spoelstra, the Filipino-American coach of the Miami Heat, taking over as coach of Gilas Pilipinas? This is sort of like that, except if it happened after Pat Riley fired Spo in disgrace under mysterious circumstances that still aren’t quite clear, even four years later. Stajcic was dismissed by the Australian federation over “a culture of fear and unacceptable levels of stress” within the Matildas program. He would later win an apology from the federation over his dismissal, but his departure caused shockwaves within the program.9

In any case, Australia’s loss became the Philippines’ gain, and Stajcic soon found that he had plenty of talent at his disposal. For more than a decade now, the people working with the women’s team have been building bridges to allow women footballers from around the world to suit up. From Keep Up:

It was an eclectic mix that Stajcic was working with. He had some pro squad members flying in from Sweden, Japan, Spain and Cyprus. Others were aligned to schools and college teams. And some of the players who trialled, during an “eye opening” quest to find gems from outside the squad, ended up becoming part of his XI.

Stajcic compared the process to a youth program, “see who would turn up and if you can find anyone.”

Stajcic devised a strategy to ensure that would allow them to be at their fittest form through their fourth and fifth games of the tournament — the ones that would determine whether they qualified for the World Cup.

The coach and his staff then went to work, conducting “interviews with every player,” to get to know them better and to get them to buy in, while establishing their goals in the context of the players’ “words, feelings and thoughts.”

They would, of course, pull it off, in a run that Stajcic describes as the best experience of his career. They’ve also built on that victory, as the team claimed the 2022 AFF Women’s Championship — the first regional football trophy the Philippines has ever won, men or women.

Under Stajcic, the team’s quality as well as its expectations have risen so quickly, that narrowly missing the medal rounds in this year’s Southeast Asian Games already counts as a disappointment for the women.

Midjourney: “A female filipino soccer player in profile in the style of Shepard Fairey with blue and red as the main colors”

THE CRAZY THING is that this only feels like the beginning of something special.

Following their magical run in India last year, goalkeeper Olivia McDaniel talked about building for the next generation.

“I think it's important that we want to give this team and women's football longevity,” McDaniel said. “We want to create more spaces for women in football and in sports in general.”

For her part, star striker Sarina Bolden talked about raising the bar for women’s soccer in general. “Maybe not everyone thought we would be here, but that’s the role that we’re playing: For the other teams like, ‘Oh, look at the Philippines. Look at what they’re doing,’” she said.

It certainly feels sustainable. The Philippines is in a sweet spot when it comes to talent, both in the country and abroad. Youth soccer is one of the most popular sports among girls in the United States, and the most popular in California, where there is the highest concentration of Filipino migrants. That is a pipeline to a renewable resource for the national team.10 And of course, you could find Filipino talent from every corner of the world.

There is even more untapped potential in the Philippines. “The women are probably the most undervalued talents in Philippine football,” Roy Moore, a football writer and founder of the Payatas FC, wrote in a 2015 analysis on GMA News Online. Roy noted that countries that have more gender equality tend to do better in women’s football, because there are fewer barriers to girls taking up sports.

Since Roy wrote that article, the Philippines’ ranking has dipped a bit to 19th in the World Economic Forum (WEF) Gender Gap Index, but we remain second in East Asia and the Pacific, below New Zealand and just ahead of Australia. Still, his point remains: equality is a strength,11 and all that’s needed is to pour in resources at the grassroots level to build a bigger base for women’s football in the country.

A bigger base of players, but a bigger base of fans too — fans who will live and die with every shot on goal, so much so that it would be unacceptable that we would have to wait until the last minute to confirm whether our team, playing in the World Cup for the first time, would even have their matches broadcast on local television.12

The Philippines ranks well in equality, but two things can be true at the same time, and in just about the most heartbreaking example of “two things can be true,” a recent United Nations Development Program study found that 99.5% of all Filipinos have biases against women, leading to constrained choices and limited opportunities: in education, in politics, in the economy, and in physical integrity.

Think about what Olivia McDaniel said, about “creating more spaces for women in football and in sports in general.”

In a fairer world, the notion that those spaces would still need to be created would just be silly.

In a fairer world, there’d perhaps be more women at the helm of big corporations, who would pour in resources for women’s sports so that female athletes could get the support they deserve, the way men who head big corporations pour irrational amounts of money into the sports they care about the most.

In a fairer world, the voices of women would dominate the conversations involving their sport, their team, and their future.

In a fairer world, we’d all be going crazy for the Malditas, or whatever the hell they would like to be called.

But we don’t live in a fair world, and I suspect this is not lost on anyone who’s been a member of the Philippine Women’s National Football Team, from Belay Fernando to Olivia McDaniel to Sarina Bolden. All of them had to display grit and overcome adversity to achieve what they’ve done in their careers. We should all be thanking our lucky stars we get to root for this team. They’re fighting for flag and pride, yes, but also so much more. As Sarina Bolden put it:

Oh, look at the Philippines. Look at what they’re doing.

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Midjourney: “A pen and watercolor illustration of Filipino basketball players on a busy street in Manila”

IN MANY WAYS, the 2023 FIBA Basketball World Cup feels like a homecoming for the Philippines. Perhaps no other country loves the sport as intensely, and in no other country is the sport as entwined into the culture. Books have been written about how the sport lives in our very core as a people. You’d find a basketball ring at every street corner. Go to almost any town center and you’d almost inevitably find three structures — the church, the municipio, and the basketball court. And that’s not even listed in its order of importance to the townsfolk.

But the spotlight brought by the FIBA World Cup also puts into focus all the issues with basketball development in the country. For a nation that’s so in love with the sport, we seem to never be able to get out of our way.

Chot Reyes, who coached the Philippines in the 2014 edition of the tournament, is back at the helm of the Gilas Pilipinas squad that will be defending our home floor in Manila. But his appointment did not come without controversy, coming on the heels last year of the abrupt departure of Tab Baldwin from the national program.

The American-Kiwi coach had spent the past several years training a group of young Filipino stars together as a team, with an eye toward the World Cup. He left in January 2022, citing conflict with his duties as the coach of Ateneo Blue Eagles in the UAAP. Baldwin would admit, months later, that his decision was influenced by the fact that most of the young players he had on the program would not be available because of commitments either to the UAAP or to overseas leagues. Al Panlilio, the head of the country’s national basketball federation, was more blunt about Baldwin’s decision: “We started losing players. He didn’t want to coach in the February window. As a federation, we had to make decisions on how to move forward.”

Enter Reyes. His appointment did not exactly float the boat for Pinoy basketball fans as he already had two prior stints as Gilas coach end in ignominious fashion. In 2014, the team flamed out of the Asian Games in a tournament that saw Reyes order his players to shoot at their own basket. In 2018, the team took part in a bench-clearing brawl against Australia that made many more international headlines than recent tourism launch videos.

Reyes stumbled out of the gate in his latest stint, as the Philippines suffered an upset against Indonesia in last year’s Southeast Asian Games to settle for the silver medal, the first time since 1989 that the country failed to win gold in the tournament.

He would later say that he tried to quit after that disastrous result, but that management of the national federation would not let him. Reyes framed the move to stay on, amid all the criticism he had been getting, as an act of service: “It’s very, very difficult, it’s very difficult for my family but you know, somebody has to do the job and I’ve always said before that I will never turn my back on my duty to the flag and country.”

That was last year. The program (and the bashing from fans) has since settled down, and the Philippines even won the Southeast Asian Games basketball gold once again this year. Availability of players for various tournaments, from the qualifier windows to the Southeast Asian Games, is a constant problem. Reyes, though, does not see that being an issue for the FIBA World Cup, given that all other leagues, domestic and international, will be on pause.

Midjourney: “Young Filipino kids in the countryside playing basketball in the style of Fernando Amorsolo”

The problems that Reyes and Baldwin faced when it comes to availability of players is not unique to the seniors team. It happens at virtually every level of the national program.

“When I was coaching the Under-16 and the Under-18, a couple of years ago, that was also my challenge. It was really hard to convince coaches to lend their players for the national team,” Eric Altamirano tells me in a conversation over Zoom.

The veteran coach had handled the country’s youth program from 2009 to 2010, but did not always have his best players available for the most important tournaments. For the FIBA Asia Junior Men’s Championship, national team stars Kiefer Ravena and Von Pessumal from the Ateneo Blue Eaglets and Kevin Ferrer of the University of Santo Tomas Tiger Cubs were only able to join the team midway through the tournament.

“They were in the playoffs, so their coaches did not allow them to practice with us for one month,” Altamirano says. “When they arrived for the games, that’s the only time they saw each other. And true enough, we were able to make it to the quarters, but that’s all we could reach. Because it’s different, we needed to be cohesive, have chemistry by the time you get to the crucial part of the tournament.”

That was in 2010. It remained an issue when Charles Tiu, the young coach behind the rise of College of Saint Benilde, joined the national youth program as an assistant coach to Sandy Arespacochaga in 2019. Even coordinating practice times for the players between the Batang Gilas squad and their respective high school teams was an issue.

“We’d only practice two times, three times a week, and we won’t even be complete,” Tiu tells me in a conversation over Zoom. He estimates that the team was not even able to complete 10 full days of practice sessions, and theirs was a team going to the FIBA Under-19 Basketball World Cup!

Schools and coaches are also hesitant about lending their players to the national program because of another concern: talent poaching. “Let’s say, a coach or an assistant coach that’s part of the national team is connected to a particular college team,” Altamirano says. The fear is that by the time the player returns to school, he’s already been recruited to transfer. “And to be honest, it happens. It happens a lot of times.”

Coaches, after all, are incentivized to win basketball games, even at the grassroots level. Beyond kneecapping our national youth teams, this kind of insular thinking does untold damage to Philippine basketball development.

“The problem is when we train our players, especially for the younger guys, who will win? It's usually the guys who are most athletically gifted at a young age,” Tiu says.

That’s all fun until that player needs to move up to a higher level of competition. “You’re putting all the emphasis on winning based on your athletic gifts, versus teaching them to play the right way,” Tiu adds. “What happens when all the other guys catch up to him in terms of strength?”

Even today, there is a development gap between players from Metro Manila versus those from the provinces. “It takes them a lot of time to catch up to what we’re trying to do here,” Tiu says. “They get here, they’d have no idea what they’re doing. You’d have to teach them everything.” In contrast, there is a much smaller learning curve for players who came from the top high schools in the National Capital Region.

It makes me think about the case of six-time PBA Most Valuable Player June Mar Fajardo, who is arguably the greatest (and unarguably the most dominant) basketball player the Philippines has ever produced. He never had access to top-flight coaching in his early years. It wasn’t until he was in college playing for the University of Cebu Webmasters1 that our crazy basketball nation became aware of the future of Philippine basketball, all six-feet-ten-inches of him. How much better could June Mar have been, with his never-before-seen blend of size, power, and grace, getting the training it deserves? We’ll never know.

Ideally, young players would be trained to develop all the skills necessary for the game, regardless of their size, athleticism, or position. There have been efforts to address the situation, with Altamirano’s National Basketball Training Center, a program that seeks to bring together and train top prospects from Metro Manila, the provinces, and the Filipino diaspora, going on nearly two decades. Tiu, for his part, doesn’t see another June Mar Fajardo being stashed away from the public eye in today’s environment, especially with social media influencers posting highlights from even the smallest basketball leagues, in their desperate search for the next viral sensation.2

Investing in players early would also help with the availability problem. The new FIBA calendar often runs in conflict with league schedules, so player availability is an issue for every country with a basketball team. The best-run programs always somehow manage to remain competitive.

In fact, Tiu noted that while Gilas has been playing in Europe over the past several weeks, Australia won’t even begin its training camp for the FIBA World Cup until mid-August. But while they would have players from the NBA, Europe, and their own domestic National Basketball League joining up, their cohesion would not be as big of an issue. This is because most of them have been playing, if not together then at least under the same system, since their younger years.

Basketball Australia, whose Boomers won their first ever world basketball medal with a bronze at Tokyo 2020, runs a national Centre of Excellence that has provided a pipeline of players to the NBA and the WNBA.

Spain, the most successful basketball nation outside the United States, reconfigured its basketball federation to function similar to a club, establishing the same systems from their youth levels to the senior levels of their national teams.

I don’t know if those models would work for the Philippines; there are millions more Filipino basketball players than Australian players. But while fans have been breathlessly debating whether the national team should go with Chot Reyes or Tab Baldwin, I would argue that what we really need is German Moreno — our basketball version of Kuya Germs.

Midjourney: "Kuya Germs wearing a colorful tuxedo while holding a basketball in the style of a manga illustration"

PHILIPPINE SHOW BUSINESS BEGAN just as many institutions and industries in the country began: as an echo of what was happening in the United States. So the studio system in the Philippines began as a mimic of the old Hollywood system, with each major film studio building up its roster of stars and “love teams” for the masses. From the ‘30s through the first “Golden Age” of Philippine cinema in the ‘50s, the industry was dominated by the big three studios: Sampaguita, LVN, and Premier.3 Every actor had to have the blessing of the studio bigwigs to become part of the industry.

And just like in Hollywood, the studio system in the Philippines eventually crumbled, with numerous smaller film outfits taking its place by the ‘60s and ‘70s. Some of the biggest stars of that era such as Fernando Poe, Jr. (FPJ Productions), Dolphy (RVQ Productions), Nora Aunor (NV Productions), and Niño Muhlach (D’Wonder Films) even began bankrolling their own films.

By the ‘80s, the film industry had converged again with three outfits, Regal, Viva, and Seiko, proving dominant even as many small players remained. Still, none of those players had the machinery to build up their stars like the studios of old did.

Television emerged as a vehicle to promote the new generation of stars. Kuya Germs, who got his start as a performer in the iconic bodabil4 theaters in Manila in the ‘50s, was the host of one such vehicle: “GMA Supershow,” where the biggest stars in the country and international performers would come on to publicize their projects.5

The resurgent Philippine film industry needed new faces for a public hungry for distraction, so while Sundays were reserved for the biggest stars, the rest of the week was still available for anyone hoping to be part of that galaxy. So in 1986, Kuya Germs launched “That’s Entertainment,” a new daily program that would feature the future of Philippine showbiz.

And it worked! It’s hard to undersell the phenomenon that was That’s Entertainment, but as a kid growing up in the late ‘80s, it was impossible to escape. Even if you weren’t into showbiz or celebrities, you’d be forced to watch it because of your siblings, your titas, or your yayas.

There were so many aspiring stars that they would be divided up into daily editions, from Monday to Friday, with each group competing in a grand production number each Saturday. As a result, a whole generation of young men and women became familiar faces — on television, yes, but also in movie posters and showbiz magazines and even on notebook covers — nearly overnight.

The show would become so ingrained in everyone’s psyche that in its 1996 debut album, Parokya Ni Edgar had a song called “Pangarap Ko Sa Buhay.” And the dream that Parokya frontman Chito Miranda sang about in the title? It was to become part of the Tuesday edition of That’s Entertainment.

Kapag ako’y nakapasok
Ay siguradong malalaos
Ang pagkaguwapo ni
Mr. Chuckie Dreyfus6

“EVERY NOW AND THEN, when Chito and I get to talk or chat, he still calls me ‘Mr. Chuckie Dreyfus.’”

Chuckie Dreyfus himself tells me that with a laugh in our Zoom conversation. He’s had a packed schedule, and while we spoke, he’s driving back from the Subic taping of the GMA-7 hit “Abot Kamay Ang Pangarap,” but he’s always game to talk about That’s Entertainment.

He joined the show a year into its run. He was already a child star, winning Best Child Performer at the Metro Manila Film Festival in 1984, and he was signed on as a Regal Baby. But the decision to become part of That’s Entertainment was a no-brainer. Because he was already friends with Sheryl Cruz and Rachel Alejandro, he chose to be part of the Wednesday group.

The cast of That’s Entertainment was a mix of budding young movie stars like Chuckie, second-generation celebrities, and virtual unknowns. Even their studio affiliations didn’t matter. “It’s either you were part of Regal, you were part of Viva, you were part of Seiko, or you’re a freelancer,” Chuckie says. They all shared the same stage on That’s Entertainment.

Kuya Germs never signed the members to contracts, leaving them free to do their own deals. The studios, for their part, also trusted him because he was an honest broker who didn’t play favorites. “No one was ever jealous of him,” Chuckie says. “And I guess because he’s such a father figure to everyone, no one really thought of him as a threat.” Unlike on, say, Philippine national basketball teams, there was no poaching inside the Broadway Centrum studio of That’s Entertainment.

The movie companies took advantage of the exposure the show provided for their talents. “You tend to become a household name when you’re part of That’s Entertainment,” Chuckie says. “They don’t have to market you as much. When they put you in a movie, you’re well known, so people come out to watch you.”

For his part, Kuya Germs saw it as his mission to get the most out of the talents on his show. Chuckie describes That’s Entertainment as a workshop on live television.

They would do segments like “That’s News,” where they would try to become news anchors. There was “That’s Modeling,” which allows the members to walk the stage like a runway, and also doubles as a way for them to thank their hair, makeup, and clothing sponsors on the show. There was “That’s Acting,” where Kuya Germs shows a clip from a movie that’s out in the theaters, and the members would act it all out. Then of course there was the usual singing and dancing.

A lot of it was cringeworthy, but that was the point: everyone needed to try everything, to figure out if it was the right avenue for them. “You find your niche, you find your market, you discover talents you actually enjoy doing,” Chuckie says.

It certainly helped him find a path forward away from the acting spotlight. He’s candid and thoughtful about how his career turned out, after the early success. “I reached a period where people still remember me as a child actor even when I had grown, and they couldn’t accept me as a more mature actor because in their minds I was still a kid,” Chuckie says. While on the show, he discovered his love for music, and he began composing original scores and doing musical arrangements for That’s Entertainment and eventually, GMA Supershow. Away from the spotlight, he carved out a career as a music producer and composer, writing songs for Rachel Ann Go and Sarah Geronimo. Chuckie has since returned to acting.7

When That’s Entertainment closed its doors in 1996, it had touched the lives of hundreds, if not thousands, of young people hoping to chase their celebrity dream. Many careers ended after their stint on the show; others continued on with their showbiz journeys, to wildly varying degrees of success. A couple of them even became real news anchors after all the training they got on That’s News.

There were even those who reached international stardom, like the legendary Lea Salonga, who was an original That’s Entertainment cast member; and Donita Rose, who ruled the airwaves of Southeast Asia in the late ‘90s and early 2000s as an MTV VJ.

While watching her at the time, my buddy Ivan noticed that Donita occasionally calls her audience “televiewers.” It’s a Kuya Germs-ism we didn’t notice was off because we had grown up listening to him saying it; most others in the English-speaking world would just say “viewers.”

We would laugh thinking about how, years after That’s Entertainment had ended, there would be kids watching Donita and picking up the term “televiewers,” in Singapore and Indonesia and Thailand and Malaysia. Kuya Germs’ influence still lived on.

DONITA ROSE WAS QUICK TO CORRECT me during our Zoom chat. It wasn’t just Southeast Asia that heard her saying “televiewers.”

“We’re also talking about China. That channel CCTV — that was the channel in China — had a hundred million households. So that plus the rest of Southeast Asia, and I would go live and people would text their messages and you could answer them, and I would be shaking so bad,” she says.

The MTV studios in Singapore was thousands of miles from the Broadway Centrum stage, but Donita says her That’s Entertainment experience helped her.

She describes herself as “a very American girl” from Clark who barely spoke Tagalog, when she started out on That’s Entertainment. She still remembers singing “Radio Romance” by Tiffany for her audition — “And I was really terrible!” — but Kuya Germs seemed bent on taking in the girl with the angelic face8 onto the show.

“Kuya Germs asked me, ‘Do you have any talent?’ ‘No.’ ‘Do you speak Tagalog?’ ‘No.’ ‘So what can you do?’ ‘I don’t know.’ And he said, ‘OK, you’re in.’”

She became part of the Friday group, allowing her to commute from Pampanga to Manila on the weekend. “I mean, some were a lot nicer than others. Like, I would say, Manilyn Reynes was the sweetest thing from back then until now. Um, I wouldn’t say much about the others,” she says with a laugh, before admitting there were some who had star complex. But away from the cameras, most people got along, and Kuya Germs treated them fairly equally.

Eventually, she found a niche in dancing, and record labels hired her to perform with dance groups like Hot Legs on variety shows like “Eat Bulaga” and “GMA Supershow” to promote their latest dance singles. But her claim to fame, Donita remembers, were the acting challenges on That’s Entertainment.

“Since I couldn’t speak Tagalog, I’d have to beg someone next to me and say, ‘Help me with this.’ They were trying to teach me what the lines mean in, like, five minutes,” she says. “I would try so hard, I’d say my lines, and people would have no idea what I’m saying. But to them, it’s like really funny.”

That paved the way for an accidental comedy career, first in movies, then eventually as Barbie Doll Dinero9 in the classic sitcom “Ober Da Bakod.”

She continued to go with the flow of her career, and the nerves never really went away. But when a spot opened up for a new MTV VJ, Donita knew that the gig was right for her. She remembers walking at a mall in Makati with her friend Mo Twister when she saw a poster for the audition. “I literally wanted to rip it and pull it down so that nobody else would see it. Because this was mine. That's what I wanted to do.”

But for all her confidence, she still found herself nervous each time the cameras rolled, with her show beaming across large swaths of Asia. But then the That’s Entertainment training would kick in.

“Kuya Germs prepared me for this, I can do this. He made me do many different things. And all of those little things made me the person that I am today, whatever it is that they can make me do on the spot I can do, because I've done it for five years with That’s Entertainment,” she says.

Midjourney: “Basketball players performing inside a theater stage in the style of a manga illustration”

THE POTENTIAL OF PHILIPPINE BASKETBALL remains tremendous, with foreign coaches often raving about our local basketball players. Charles Tiu, the Benilde basketball coach, recently brought in a consultant from Slovenia who onced coached players like future NBA star Goran Dragic. “He was looking at our Filipino players from what he sees and they’re way more athletic on the average than European players,” Tiu says.

Another thing going for Pinoy basketball players is the innate basketball sense. “Our basketball sense is great, versus in Japan, they were saying, they were so calculated. It was like, you set a screen, you have to explain exactly what do I do when a guy is this far away, when he’s one step, two steps away,” Tiu adds. Those are the little things that Filipino players tend to figure out instinctively.

Eric Altamirano, the longtime coach and director of the National Basketball Training Program, also sees the amount of talent from across the country as a good problem to have. The challenge, both coaches see, is bringing together the skills and the discipline at an early enough age to last their careers.

It’s easier said than done because of the politics involving Philippine basketball. We always talk about love when talking about Filipinos and basketball, but that tends to cut both ways. I must say, there’s something very familiar — an overbearing quality that is very Pinoy — about how toxic it is to love basketball so much that you want to win all the games that you end up hurting the sport in the long run.

It would help if we could find a Kuya Germs figure for Philippine basketball: a true honest broker beloved and trusted by all parties and stakeholders, whose only mission is to develop young talent. But that’s much easier said than done.

By the time That’s Entertainment closed its doors, its position as the top avenue for churning out young talent had been usurped by another entity: Star Magic. ABS-CBN had wanted exclusive access to young talent it could build up, and soon enough GMA and the film studios would follow suit. Everything had become exclusive. In the end, even Kuya Germs could not be Kuya Germs anymore.