![INTERNATIONAL. Ricky Sismundo is a Filipino fighter who lives and trains in Japan, but has fought his two biggest performances in Quebec, Canada. Photo by Bob Levesque/Photozone]()
MANILA, Philippines – Ricky Sismundo is a man with many homes, yet a man without one.
Sismundo is a Filipino junior welterweight boxer who lives and trains in Japan. His trainer is Japanese, and the vast majority of his fights have taken place in Japan, but as he was born in Ubay in Bohol - the same Philippine province where boxing champ Nonito Donaire Jr was born - those who follow his career are mostly Filipino. However, it is the Canadian audience that is most familiar with his in-ring work. Online footage of Sismundo is scarce, but the two biggest fights of his career have taken place in Montreal, Quebec.
Even Quebec itself is somewhat marginalized within its own country. In 1995, the province was but a few percentage points away from separating from the country completely in a national referendum. Though tensions have died down over the years, Quebec still harbors a culture all its own. Within the world of boxing, it is known as one of the sport's true hotbeds, a place where arenas can still be filled for an event, and where its fighters are covered with regularity in print media and on television.
That enthusiasm does not extend to the rest of Canada, however. So Ricky Sismundo's notoriety is relegated to a niche community within a French-speaking province in Canada, the only one among 13 in the nation.
That is to say that very few people knew Ricky Sismundo could really fight.
Sismundo signed on to face Canadian-based welterweight Ghislain Maduma on December 22 in Montreal. As a general rule, Sismundo isn't given much notice about when he's going to be fighting. As a fighter without a powerhouse manager, much less a promoter, he doesn't have the clout to command those types of luxuries. As a result, he has lost some fights that he perhaps could have won with a longer training camp, netting him 9 losses altogether, along with 3 draws.
The party line amongst fighters in Sismundo's position is often that other fighters purposely give them as little notice as possible because they are afraid of what they would be able to do with a full camp. There is indeed some truth to this logic. Often times managers and matchmakers will notify their charge that they will have a fight on a given date well in advance, have them train for weeks, and then lock down an opponent some time within the final two weeks leading up to said date. Sometimes that's by design, other times it's because an opponent genuinely couldn't be locked down, or another had fallen out. In any event, it puts the “home” fighter in an enviable position, having trained properly and been focused on a peak time weeks prior to the opponent even knowing about the matchup.
In truth, if a matchmaker brings an opponent in on short notice, it's often because he or she doesn't think that fighter is very good. It would be poor business in most cases to shock the fighter of a promoter who is paying you with an outstanding opponent.
![FIGHTER. Ghislain Maduma knew he was in for a fight against Ricky Sismundo. Just not how much of a fight. Photo by Bob Levesque/Photozone]()
While Ricky Sismundo is indeed good, he hasn't been treated that way throughout his career. The longest video clip of him on the internet is from 2010, a fight which he lost to two-time world title challenger Terdsak Kokietgym of Thailand. Kokietgym is probably best known for his 2014 scrap with Orlando Salido, in which he was laid flat unconscious. If Sismundo couldn't beat him, how good could he be?
Ghislain Maduma knew the answer to that. Earlier in 2016, he watched as Sismundo battered his friend and former training partner Dierry Jean during a disputed draw. The fight was only broadcast on Quebec television, so it went mostly unnoticed by the boxing public, despite the significance of a fighter one fight removed from a world title shot and an HBO date nearly losing to a journeyman.
Maduma was on the comeback trail of sorts, dropping fights to Kevin Mitchell and Maurice Hooker in the two true steps up in his career. Now he had a spot on a card run by his promoter, Eye of the Tiger Management, and he wanted to prove he had improved. The Congolese-born Canadian had spent months in training camp with Manny Pacquiao, at first mimicking Timothy Bradley, and felt his time with the boxing legend had done wonders for his career.
“I got tired just watching him train,” said Maduma. “I looked forward to the sparring days, because those were the easy ones. I thought I worked hard, but seriously, there were times when I wondered if I could keep up. I saw what it takes to truly be an elite fighter.”
It would have been simple for Maduma to fight less talented fighters over and over until he was given his next big opportunity. His promoter, Camille Estephan, is notoriously generous to his fighters, and would have happily obliged. He could have leveraged his newfound affiliation with Pacquiao and the Wild Card Gym to a spot on an undercard on a pay-per-view perhaps, or even professionally endured the sparring lifestyle for the weekly paydays and free meals.
Instead he took perhaps the most dangerous route possible. Maduma wanted to prove a point. He wanted to face Sismundo, and he wanted to do so while giving Sismundo a full training camp. In doing so, Maduma told several media outlets that he was taking a net loss of $500 on the fight just to make it happen, after paying for a training camp in Hollywood.
In doing so, he gave Sismundo a plane ticket to Canada, and a chance to turn his career around.
“I had 8 weeks to prepare this time. I don't often get much notice,” said Sismundo, with a smile, standing in the back corner of a gaudy theatre in downtown Montreal where the weigh-in is being held.
Sismundo stands with his skeleton crew—his trainer Kei Nideira, and chief second Kazuya Harada, all wearing matching jumpsuits with “Sisbomba” on the back, an anglicized version of his Japanese nickname. Their small gathering and shy nature are in stark contrast to the rest of the room—mainly the Quebec-based fighters, who seemingly all have friends and family with them, and a member of their team for every menial task.
For example, when main event fighter David Lemieux steps off the scale, there is someone standing nearby holding a fruit salad, and an entirely different person holding a bottle of Pedialyte. Neither are his trainer of record Marc Ramsay. When Sismundo gets off the scale after easily making the 140-pound limit, he walks to the back corner where “Team Sisbomba” has set up shop, and digs a snack out of a Pharmaprix grocery bag himself. He sits in a chair facing the wall and eats while Harada and Nideira converse several steps away from him.
The two chat jovially until Nidiera spots Maduma walking nearby, and runs up to him waving his cell phone, asking if he would take a picture with him and Sismundo. Maduma seems overly eager to do so, adding “you know, I'm part-Filipino now too!,” suggesting his friendship with Pacquiao had given him honorary citizenship. (RELATED: Sparring partners say Pacquiao in devastating form)
Maduma makes his rounds through the theatre, greeting seemingly everybody, and then doubles back around to shake Sismundo's hand once again and wish him good luck.
He knows he's in for a fight. Just not how much of a fight.
As the two combatants square off for the start of Round 1, a spectator in the crowd notes “they don't even look like they're in the same weight class.”
Indeed, to a casual observer with a general understanding of how matchmaking in boxing often works, the optics of the fight portrayed another hometown fighter with lots of crowd support set up against a smaller, non-threatening opponent.
Maduma has a sturdy build for a 140-pound fighter. His shoulders look like they are made to carry the frame of a middleweight, and his eight-pack abdomen makes even his fellow sculpted training partners envious. Sismundo is substantially shorter than him, and his physique suggests that weighing more than 140 pounds would be too much to ask, as he's packed as much muscle as he can into his structure. It would appear that the vast majority of his poundage exists in his thighs and calves, sporting unusually thick legs for a fighter, which are typically spindly and spry, made for dynamic movement. His black boots are left unlaced several notches, for comfort, but ostensibly because they would not fit around his legs.
Lucky for Sismundo, he only moves in one direction, so his legs will do just fine.
The plot of the fight is apparent from the very beginning. Sismundo will charge forward and throw everything—absolutely everything—at one hundred percent of his power, while Maduma will peck away and keep a reasonable distance.
With 14 seconds left in the first round though, Sismundo finds a loophole—or rather, jackhammers one. He throws a right hand with the same trajectory and fervor as a person angrily chucking an object at a wall. In that scenario, the object would break. In this one, Sismundo's right hand hits Maduma's high guard with such force that it deflects and lands on the temple, knocking him to the canvas.
Maduma gets back to a vertical base with his eyes wide, as if he were adjusting to the light after a brief slumber.
In the ninth round, Sismundo lands the very same right hand, but this time Maduma's hands are below his shoulders as he winds up for a punch of his own. After a few complimentary blows, his wobbly legs abandon him, and only the bottom rope and corner pad prevent him from barrel rolling out of the ring entirely.
Despite suffering two knockdowns, and taking part in a close knit affair otherwise, Maduma strolls out for the 10th and final round like a fighter who believes he's ahead on the scorecards. His chin is tucked behind his shoulder, like so many modern fighters do thanks to Floyd Mayweather. But he displays Mayweatheresque confidence in a situation that should call for desperate measures and a frantic attempt at a knockout.
{source}<iframe src="https://www.facebook.com/plugins/video.php?href=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.facebook.com%2FBADILLOKICKBOXING%2Fvideos%2F10210878773154550%2F&show_text=0&width=560" width="560" height="315" style="border:none;overflow:hidden" scrolling="no" frameborder="0" allowTransparency="true" allowFullScreen="true"></iframe>{/source}
And why shouldn't he? The most common script in boxing dictates that the home fighter, the “A” side, the one on the left side of the bout sheet, always wins. Even in this instance, in a fight in which the home fighter objectively did not get the best of the action, the general consensus at ringside is that the decision will still go his way.
Except this time it doesn't. The scores are read, and Ricky Sismundo is declared victorious, by the margin the naked eye would have assumed was appropriate—97-91, and 95-93 twice.
“He was easier than I thought,” said Maduma after the fight. “I just got caught. He didn't hit that hard, he just caught me. That's on me, that's my fault.”
As Maduma walked the halls of the Bell Centre, going out of his way to greet everyone and assure them that he was okay both emotionally and physically, his conqueror celebrated with his team of two. Ricky, Kei and Kazuya take turns posing for pictures in an empty enclave where the Zamboni sits idle until the next NHL hockey game and upload them to Facebook.
Not long after, Maduma took to Facebook as well, and announced his retirement. His promoter later added that everyone felt he had peaked as an athlete, and that it was time for him to walk away and pursue other ventures. Losing to Sismundo, they felt, was proof that he just didn't have it anymore.
That alone is proof that while the victory was life-changing for Sismundo, whose record now stands at 31 wins, 9 losses with 3 draws, with 13 wins by knockouts. In other ways it wasn't.
Even his opponent whom he knocked down and soundly defeated wasn't entirely convinced of how good he is. But Ricky himself? He finally has the proof he was looking for. – Rappler.com
![]()
