San Miguel’s Jun Mar Fajardo faces Ginebra’s Greg Slaughter for the 2018 PBA Commissioner’s cup crown. But decades ago, a similar clash of bigs kept the PBA crowd on their feet. Here’s a reblog of the interesting match-up of what was then, and what is now.
Decades ago, Cebu produced arguably the most celebrated center rivalry ever produced in Philippine Basketball when the dominating duo of Mon Fernandez and Abet Guidaben banged bodies under the basket for arch-rivals Toyota and Crispa respectively. So intense was the duel between the two teams – and their colossal slotmen – that fans would fill the Araneta Coliseum to the rafters everytime the rivals bared their fangs on each other in the hardcourt.
The Fernandez-Guidaben rivalry played a big role in PBA’s golden years. (courtesy of video48)
Not a lot of today’s PBA fans would know that Mon ‘El Presidente’ Fernandez was a proud product of Cebu City’s University of San Carlos; and that Abet Guidaben had been discovered while playing for the neighboring Colegio de San Jose Recoletos. From their humble beginnings in the hardcourts of Cebu, both behemoths would go eyeball-to-eyeball countless times, trading elbows in the prestigious…
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