The country’s international singing champ — Sofronio Vasquez, 32 — is back in the country and was celebrated Monday (6 January) on ABS-CBN’s It’s Showtime, which has been airing widely for more than a year now on an accommodation (rental) arrangement on GMA 7, aside from ABS-CBN non-network digital platforms.

Those who have watched Vasquez in The Voice USA’s season 26 and caught him on that It’s Showtime episode may have been surprised that Vasquez is not as bulky as he was in almost all The Voice episodes in November and early December last year. 

Those episodes were variously taped at The Voice USA studios about three months before it began airing, kicking off with the blind auditions. In a remote interview of It’s Showtime while Vasquez was still in the US and had been judged and voted as the champion, he revealed that The Voice competitions for those who passed the blind auditions is actually spread out in several months. It wasn’t like in Tawag ng Tanghalan (TNT) on It’s Showtime in which the competitions were “tuluy-tuloy” and the whole competition is over within a few weeks. 

Vasquez emerged as finalist in three seasons of TNT, but never the grand champion in those seasons. 

That’s it: when The Voice USA season 26 began airing in November, Vasquez already knew he had won. He was sworn not to reveal to anyone most of the season’s results. 

Vasquez may have worked on losing weight soon after the championship taping, knowing that by December, after Season 26 had been fully aired, he would be booked for singing engagements either all by himself or with his world-famous The Voice mentor Michael Buble.

Still no aides

The new singing idol turned up at the ABS-CBN studios in Quezon City without an “alalay” to carry his huge backpack which may have contained his suit for his guesting on TNT. ABS-CBN posted on its YouTube videos of Vasquez taking the stairs alone to the second-floor studio of It’s Showtime with his backpack in tow. He knows his way around the studios not only because he was a three-time TNT finalist, but also because he was hired as vocal coach of contestants in the show soon after the third time he competed in the show.

Actually, it was only after he had been proclaimed The Voice USA champ that Vasquez revealed in some interviews that even if he did not become TNT champion, the show gave him that off-camera job as the contestants’ vocal coach.

Some wags thought Vasquez resented being just a finalist in all three seasons of TNT he joined. They are not aware that TNT is also the first TV singing contest that accepted him in 2019. He auditioned in Voice Philippines in the past and no judge turned their chair around for him. There were other TV contests that rejected him in the auditions.