Popular Sports in the Philippines

Arnis de Mano

Arnis de Mano, the Filipino fighting art that’s also known as Eskrima and Kali, was designated the National Sport of the Philippines by the Fourteenth Congress on June 30, 2007.

Since the Spanish conquest of the Philippine Islands, guerrilla fighters have fought the Spaniards, Americans, Japanese and even the national government. However, most practitioners of Arnis, or Eskrima, have been farmers training to protect their families and livestock with flails, machetes and other farm implements.

In the last century, the most important practice of Arnis has been in dueling, which is not uncommon here. Duels have often been fought with hardwood sticks, to reduce legal problems, yet some have been fought with blades. Today, men are more likely to carry knives to use them when tempers flare, so knife-fighting, and, to a lesser extent, machete fighting is a living ‘fighting art’ here.

Arnis, or Eskrima, has recently been practiced as a sport, although there isn’t yet much uniformity or standardization. The rules, and their corresponding effects on technique, haven’t yet been universally standardized, but several tournaments have been ‘fought’ with various sets of rules.

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Basketball

The unofficial national sport of the Philippines is basketball. Around 1900, the Y.M.C.A. introduced the newly-invented sport to the Philippines. Now it’s so popular among Filipinos that most villages have at least one basketball court.

The Philippine Basketball Association (PBA) is Asia’s first -and the world’s second- professional basketball league, founded in 1975. It’s the most-watched basketball league and is the training ground for some Americans aspiring to the NBA. The Philippine Basketball League (PBL), is another, with many players who gain experience while hoping to be drafted into the PBA. 

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Boxing

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Boxing is popular on television in the Philippines. Gabriel ‘Flash’ Elorde was one of the greatest Filipino boxers, along with Emmanuel ‘Manny‘ Pacquiao and Mansueto Velasco, all world champions in their classes.

Amateur light flyweight Mansueto ‘Onyok’ Velasco won a silver medal in the 1996 Olympic games. His brother, Roel Velasco, won a bronze medal in the 1992 Olympics.

Manny Pacquiao is considered by many to be the world’s current best pound-for-pound pugilist. A.J. Liebling wrote, “The span between the top limit of one weight class and the next represents the margin that history has proved is almost impossible to overcome.” But Pacquiao has beaten this ‘conventional wisdom’ by winning eight titles in eight divisions.

Pacquiao is normally a 5-feet, 6½-inches, 138-pound light-welterweight.  He won his first major world title at 112 pounds then bulked up to 122 pounds to defeat Lehlo Ledwaba, who was considered the best fighter of that weight division in 2001.  Then Pacquiao beat the trio of Juan Manuel Marquez, Marco Antonio Barrera and Erik Morales in the featherweight division.

In March 2008, Pacquiao beat Juan Manuel Marquez to take the WBC super-featherweight title and thus became the first Asian fighter who’s a champion in three weight divisions.  In June of that year, Pacquiao beat David Diaz for the WBClightweight champion’s belt and became the first Asian boxer to win world championships in four weight classes.

Months later, in a December 2008 welterweight division fight, Pacquiao pounded 10-time world champion and Olympic gold medalist Oscar De la Hoya so badly that he wouldn’t answer the bell for a ninth round of punishment.

In May 2009, Pacquiao won the junior welterweight belt from champion Ricky Hatton, who’d never lost a fight at 140 pounds.  Pacquiao knocked out Hatton in the second round after dropping him twice in the first.

In the November 2009 WBO welterweight fight, Pacquiao knocked Puerto Rican Miguel Cotto down in rounds three and four then won by TKO when the referee stopped the beating.

In March 2010, Pacquiao defeated Joshua Clottey and retained his WBO welterweighttitle.

In November 2010, Pacquiao defeated Mexican Antonio Margarito (who outweighed him and had a longer reach) to win the WBC super welterweight title, his eighth title in eight weight classes.  His record was then 53-3-2.

In June 2012, Manny Pacquiao was upset by Timothy Bradley on a split decision in Las Vegas, Nevada, U.S.A. and lost his W.B.O. Welterweight title.

In December 2012, Pacquiao met Juan Manuel Márquez for a fourth time, in a non-title bout at welterweight. Pacquiao was knocked out with one second left in the sixth round.

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Billiards

Billiards is increasingly popular in the Philippines, and every city has plenty of pool halls frequented at many hours of the day and night.

Francisco Bustamante and Efren Reyes have been two of the world’s ten best billiard players. Robert “Superman” Gomez cinched second at the recent World Pool Championship.

Jose “Amang” Parica led the “Filipino Invasion” of the U.S. professional billiards scene. He was the 1997 World Player of the Year and the first player to shoot a perfect game of 1,000 points. He placed second in the 2005 U.S. Open.

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Chess

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In public parks of major cities one can find scores of avid chess players. Filipinos have gained international renown in chess; Eugene Torre became Asia’s first chess grand master and was the nation’s number one player for many years. He befriended Bobby Fischer, who eventually came to reside in the Philippines. You may have heard ofWesley So (now 15 years old), who became the youngest Grandmaster in the world.

Rogelio “Joey” Antonio, Junior is an International Grandmaster who was ranked second in the Philippines and 319 in the world in 2007. Recently Torre and Antonio have been overtaken by Grandmaster Mark Paragua.

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Bowling

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Olivia “Bong” Coo is the most be-medalled Filipino athlete of any sport, a 4-time World Champion bowler, the first Filipino athlete listed in the Guinness Book of World Records.

Rafael “Paeng” Nepomuceno won the World Cup four times from 1976 – 1996, won over 100 tournament titles and was the first man enshrined in the International Bowling Hall of Fame in Saint Louis, Missouri.

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Sipa

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Sipa (‘kick’) was traditionally the Philippines’ national sport. The game is related to the modern game Sepak Takraw.

Two types of sipa games have been played. One is sipa and the other is sipa lambatan, the national game.

Sipa is a child’s game of repeatedly kicking a “sapatilla” (a rivet washer) plumped with papel de hapon.

Sipa lambatan is a game of kicking a rattan ball across a net. It was invented by the late Teodoro “Ka Doroy” Valencia in the 1940s.

The spherical Sipa ball was made of woven rattan strips with symmetrical holes, 10 cm diameter and about as light and bouncy as a tennis ball.

Simplified game (one-on-one, two-on-two or four-on-four): a set of rules determines penalty points (such as the ball bouncing twice on the ground). The two teams play against each other until a certain number of penalty points is accrued by one of the teams.

The ball should only be touched with the legs from below the knee to the tips of the toes. The Sipa ball can touch the ground, depending on the determined method of play.

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Sepak Takraw

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Sepak is a Malay word for kick, and Takraw is a Thai word for the hand woven ball in the game. So the game is literally ‘kick ball.’ In one year in the Philippines, I have only seen Filipinos playing Sepak Takraw three times – ‘pickup games’ using a ball and a net that I’d bought, on the playground of Baguio Gold Elementary School. So althoughSepak Takraw is indigineous to Southeast Asia, it’s not nearly as popular as basketball, invented in U.S.A.