No hanky-panky

The Games and Amusements Board (GAB) has reached out to the Philippine Amusement and Gaming Corporation (Pagcor) in line with the government agency’s drive to clean up the sport.

“We wrote to PAGCOR asking it to check if there are unusual betting patterns in its betting sites,” GAB chairperson Francisco Rivera told DAILY TRIBUNE.

The GAB is going the extra mile amid the impending investigation on three-division world champion John Riel Casimero, who is coming off a loss to Kyonosuke Kameda of Japan late last month in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan.

Casimero was supposed to appear before the GAB last Tuesday to explain his side on his alleged involvement in a fight-fixing incident in Kyrgyzstan.

On Thursday, Casimero went to the GAB and forwarded a letter that expressed their willingness to cooperate with the agency.

“They dropped by this afternoon and submitted their letter. The National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) has agreed to do the examination of the phones. But the NBI insisted that despite the Casimeros’ consent, they still need a court order,” Rivera said.

The GAB had to send Casimero’s camp a letter after the fighter’s brother-trainer Jayson took to social media and told their followers that they had to lose in order to get a bigger fight.

The Casimeros deleted the video but that didn’t escape the GAB’s eyes even if the boxer explained that his statement was lost in translation since he is not fluent in Tagalog.

Casimero, who turns 37 early next year, holds a win-loss-draw mark of 34-5-1 with 23 knockouts.

He has traveled the world extensively challenging for titles and defending them on hostile ground.

Had it not been for the pandemic, the heavy-handed Casimero would have fought Naoya “Monster” Inoue in Las Vegas in April 2020.

Casimero and Sean Gibbons, the influential and likewise globe-trotting American dealmaker, partnered for ten years before going separate ways in 2021.

After severing ties with Gibbons, Casimero found himself bouncing off from one promoter to another as his career took a nosedive.

He was stripped off the world title in 2023 after violating a rule on weight reduction of the British Boxing Board of Control in the runup to his fight with Paul Butler of England

Five months earlier in Dubai, Casimero withdrew from the fight — against Butler — when he came down with gastritis.

The Leyte-born Casimero is no stranger to being overweight.

It was suspected that Casimero was actually having a hard time shedding off excess baggage.

In October last year, Casimero was slapped a one-year ban by the Japan Boxing Commission (JBC) for coming in overweight against Saul Sanchez.

Though he knocked Sanchez out, the JBC still suspended Casimero for 12 months as Japanese authorities consider it a major offense.

The suspension left him without a fight for 12 months.

In May 2014, Casimero was stripped of the world light-fly crown after coming in five pounds over the 108 limit.

He still knocked out Mauricio Fuentes of Colombia in one round in Cebu but the title was declared vacant.