While some celebrities like Kim Kardashian and Mo Twister get paid to tweet about various mundane things like new products, restaurants and services, Don Allado, a veteran PBA player, paid a huge sum of money because of his tweets.
He was asked to pay a P500,000 fine for his tweets which were deemed detrimental to the sport. He was also given a one conference ban.
He was frustrated after coming off a loss in a game where he thinks bad calls made by the referees caused his team the game.
Here are the tweets concerned:
"I can accept losing to teams. But I can't accept losing bcoz of referees"
"I'm the guy that says what others can't. #PBA games are fixed. They control who is in & who is out. It's a disgrace to be in this league."
"I am bitter about losing. Not to Powerade, but to #PBA . In my opinion, this league has little credibility left"
"Very disappointed in the PBA. You didn't have to suspend the refs. They did what u told them to,"
After he tweeted, a large number of people actually responded and lauded him for his courage. Now, the question is, how true were his statements?
Game fixing has been hovering around sports for a very long time. Who could forget Michael Jordan and his alleged Mafia problems which supposedly caused the death of his father.
Andres Escobar, the captain of the Colombian National team in the 90's was gunned down after a match where his own goal caused their team to lose an important World Cup match.
More recently and closer to home, the appearance of an otherwise unknown pool player in the finals of a big international tournament has caused tongues to wag after he supposedly downed much more accomplished opponents in dubious fashion.
The PBA and even the UAAP have always had these speculations surrounding the games. Did Allado speak the truth or as he just being a bitter loser?
The fact of the matter is, he has retracted his statements and he has apologized to the PBA. However, he has opened a can of worms. The spotlight is on the PBA but not for the right reasons.will the bad publicity bury the league even deeper into the ground? We all know that the PBA has been suffering a steadily decreasing fanbase over the years. will this finally kill them off? On the other hand, will this ignite the fire and make more people interested?
I do not doubt that game fixing exists. There is too much money thrown around in sports betting. I'm not saying this is true in particular for the PBA. Maybe they are doing it, maybe not. The fact is, the problem exists. Not just here but worldwide. The Italian League had a large controversy some years back when some of the top flight teams were found guilty of game fixing. It happens perhaps more rampantly than most of us realize.
As an avid sports fan, this is very disappointing almost nearly as bad as finding out that the WWF (now WWE) is scripted, or that Santa Claus is not real.
What will the PBA do about it? sure they have punished the player, the little guy who spoke out. But how much will they really do towards finding out the truth behind the allegations?
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