Sports Event : The Crispa-Toyota brawl of 1977

The Crispa-Toyota brawl of 1977 (when players of both teams got jailed)

PBA'77 Inaugurals:
Marred by full-blown brawls

The country's premiere basketball tournament literally jumped off with a great big bang: and the sound, I assure you, was not from a firecracker or a 'de bawang' concoction thrown to celebrate one big, great bash. The sound was audibly frightening: onrushing uniformed men, people and players and onlookers and 'mirons' and fans scaterring every which way; while at the site where the rumble and ominous goings-on occured, sounds of bodies bump ing the iron panels (the gate toward the dressing room area) and grunts of a full-blown riot accompanied by an honest-to-goodness melee, reached my ears. In that kind of a situation, one instinctively thinksnot of rushing head-on to 'cover' what's going on, but of self-preservation. Thus, our hasty retreat toward the area near the Southern goal. Or to be precise, at the back of it. Where we saw Eddie Alinea of PNA and Roger Flores of Times Journal also temporarily 'seeking' refuge from the full-blown riot occurring at the precise moment. Truth to tell, I was keeping pace with Dante Silverio (who was walking toward dressing room before all hell broke loose. I was asking the Toyota coach why he was meted out a technical foul. "Ewan ko nga ba," was what Dante Silverio was saying at that time. Then, all of a sudden the eruption of those frighteningly ominous sounds from near the small door leading to the area near the dressing rooms. Sights we caught: uniformed Metropolitan Police men and security men in blue rushing toward the locality from where we retreated; a struggling Atoy Co trying to get himself free from those people restraining him (or holding him) and possibly trying to stop him from entering the door leading to the area of the fullblown riot; onlookers, kibitzers, a mixture of blue uniformed security guards (of the Araneta Coliseum) plus club-brandishing Metro Policemen trying to restore order and sending the crowd away from the arena of the rumble; spectators scampering and rushing pell-mell (lest they get hit by any object during the free-forall), photographers trying to barge through the kibitzers' cordon, desperately trying to train their lenses at the riot. For my part, being a woman, I merely stayed put near the back part of the southern basket. It would be folly to rush headlong into the scene just to be able to get a vivid picture of the melee. I might get clubbed or get a haywire 'tabig' or worse, crushed underfoot by the scamperings of the kibitzers. Later, after some 8 or ten minutes of this, the reporters from the different papers rushed towards the protagonists: the Crispa camp and the Toyota camp. Conflicting versions were heard. Rey Franco maintained that Jaworski hit him first', thus the ensuing 'gulo.' On the other hand, at the Toyota dressing room, Jaworski seated not far from Dante Silverio, just as stoutly maintained that it wasn't so. "Basta nakita ko na lang nagkakagulo..." " Baby Dalupan told Bulletin Today scribe Al Mendoza: "Si Soriano, apat ang gumugulpi sa kanya. Wala siyang kalaban-laban. (Four people were mauling Soriano, he was simply helpless). Ramon Fernandez, perspiring as he sat near Sonny Jaworski, sported a cut under his right eye. Soriano, meanwhile, when he emerged from the dressing room, had an ugly lump over his right eye and another lump beside his mouth. He had some bruises in the upper arms. Franco's reddened right ear he now and then touched as he walked out of the dressing room. The authorities from Precinct 2 halted Silverio's group as they came out in a bunch from the dressing room. This was done to ensure that the Crispa players then trooping out towards the southern exits and the Toyota hoopsters would not cross each others paths on their way out. (And perhaps figure anew in another konfrontas with fist and suntukan???) Commissioner Leo Prieto said a meeting would be held the next day (April 18). Prieto would get reports from security people who witnessed the mayhem. Regardless of the outcome of the investigations the atrocious (how else dub it?) erupting of an ugly riot is a definite black-eye in the overglamourized PBA.