How Sabong went wild Online

 # How Sabong Came Online

### *A Pioneer's History*

**by Ricardo R. "Eric" Canonizado** — *Spurblade*

## Chapter 1 — A Father's Errand

Every big story in my life, it turns out, began as something small. This one began with a little boy, a toy rooster, and a defeat.

But let me be honest with you from the very first page, because this book is nothing if it is not honest: I did not begin as a sabungero. That may surprise the people who know me now, who know me as *Spurblade*, who know the forums and the websites and the years I gave to this sport. But it is the truth. The love of the fightingcock did not come to me at birth, the way it comes to so many Filipino men, passed down quietly like a surname. It came to me later, and it came through my son.

Let me take you back further, so you understand the soil it grew from.

**Animals were always ordinary in our house.** My father, Emilio Canonizado, was a banker — a loan examiner at the Development Bank of the Philippines. His work was to study loan applications, and part of that work was to go out on weekends and inspect the farms of the people asking to borrow. He was a city man, a banker's man; we were not farmers and never pretended to be. But those weekend inspections became our family time. He would bring his sons along — we were six children, three boys and three girls — and while he walked the fields and looked over the livestock, he would let us swim, let us play, let us be boys in the countryside.

And sometimes, in the way of the provinces, the farmers he visited would thank him with a gift — a chicken, some livestock, a token of gratitude carried home. That is how the first chickens of my life arrived. Not as fighters. Not as champions. As gifts, ordinary as a basket of fruit.

So animals were never strange to me. But if you had asked me, as a grown man, what creature I loved most, I would not have said the rooster at all. **I would have said the racing pigeon.**

By then I had built WaveNet — my internet company, which I put up in 1997 — and being an internet man meant I could chase any interest as far as my curiosity would take me. And my interest, in those days, was pigeons. The homing pigeon, the racer, the bird that finds its way home across impossible distances. That was my passion. Not sabong. Not yet.

The turn — the real beginning of everything in this book — came through my son.

**He was about two years old.** We were visiting his grandmother, my mother, and his cousins out in the province, where the men do what provincial men have always done for leisure on a weekend: they set two roosters against each other in the yard and gather around to watch. My little boy — Odaz, though back then he was just my baby — saw those two roosters fight. And he came alive. He shouted, he pointed, he called everyone to come and see, the way only a small child can, as if he had discovered something the whole world needed to know about.

I ran to him. I will admit it — I was a worried father, and I did not like him so close to two fighting birds. I went to pull him back, and instead he threw his arms around me. Then, still lit up with excitement, he asked me — the way a child asks for a toy — if he could have a chicken of his own.

What kind of father says no to that?

So I bought him a little rooster. A small thing, a pet. And for a while that was the end of it — just a boy and his bird.

Until one ordinary day I came home from the office, and my son was upset. His rooster, he told me, had been beaten — *tremendously* beaten — by the neighbor's rooster. I went to look, half expecting some fearsome bird next door. But the rooster that had humbled my son's pet was nothing special at all. Just a plain, ordinary neighborhood chicken.

I want you to understand what that did to me, because it is the hinge the whole story turns on. It was a small thing. A backyard scuffle between two birds. But it stung me — not for myself, for *him*. My boy had asked me for one thing, and the one thing I gave him had lost to an ordinary rooster. And something in me, the same something that would later drive everything I did in this sport, decided: *my son will not have an ordinary bird. My son will have the best fowl the Philippines can offer.*

And so I did the only thing I knew how to do. **I went to the internet to find it.**

Remember — I was not an ordinary man searching. I was an internet pioneer, sitting at the on-ramp of Philippine connectivity, with the whole young web at my fingertips at a time when most of the country had never seen it. I searched for the greatest fighting bloodline in the Philippines. And the name that rose up out of that search was one I would chase for years to come: the **Zamboanga White**.

But here is the thing I did not expect. When I went looking for the Zamboanga White, I did not find a quiet catalog of birds. I walked straight into a *war* — a heated online debate raging between American breeders and Filipino gamefowl enthusiasts over the true origins of that very bloodline. Who bred it first. Where it truly came from. Whose it really was.

I did not know it then, but that argument would change my life. Because my voice in that debate — a father just trying to learn — is what caught the attention of a woman named **Princess Naldo**, a breeder who held the very line I was chasing. And she did something that opened every door that followed.

She invited me to her farm.

---

Hold that image, because everything grows from it: not a lifelong sabungero, but a pigeon-racing internet man; not a grand plan, but a two-year-old's toy rooster beaten by an ordinary bird; not a cockpit, but a search bar. I entered this ancient sport the way no one before me had — *through the internet*, before I had ever set foot in a real derby.

That is not a small detail. It is the whole thesis of this book in miniature. The man who would one day help bring all of sabong online had himself come into sabong *online* first. The medium and the message, tangled together from the very first day.

There is one more thing I should tell you now, so you understand why this book exists and why it is written the way it is.

That two-year-old boy — the one whose beaten rooster sent me searching — grew up. His name is Odaz. And as I sit here setting these memories down, I am typing them on *his* laptop. The very machine this history is being written on belongs to the child the whole journey began for. I went hunting a champion for him when he could barely walk. Decades later, it is through him, and through his machine, that the story is finally told.

A man does not often get to see his beginnings and his endings touch like that. I am grateful that I have.

So this is where we start: a banker's son who loved pigeons, a little boy who loved a rooster, and an ordinary defeat that would not let me rest. Everything else — the farm in Muntinlupa, the man named Lando, the forums, the Cyberfriends, the fallings-out, and the backyard breeders who became icons — all of it grew from this one small, ordinary, loving errand.

Let me take you there.

---

*[Chapter 1 of 13 · Voice: Eric, first person · Next: Chapter 2 — "The Man Who Wired the Nation."]*

# H# How Sabong Came Online ### *A Pioneer's History* **by Ricardo R. "Eric" Canonizado** — *Spurblade* --- ## Chapter 1 — A Father's Errand Every big story in my life, it turns out, began as something small. This one began with a little boy, a toy rooster, and a defeat. But let me be honest with you from the very first page, because this book is nothing if it is not honest: I did not begin as a sabungero. That may surprise the people who know me now, who know me as *Spurblade*, who know the forums and the websites and the years I gave to this sport. But it is the truth. The love of the fightingcock did not come to me at birth, the way it comes to so many Filipino men, passed down quietly like a surname. It came to me later, and it came through my son. Let me take you back further, so you understand the soil it grew from. **Animals were always ordinary in our house.** My father, Emilio Canonizado, was a banker — a loan examiner at the Development Bank of the Philippines. His work was to study loan applications, and part of that work was to go out on weekends and inspect the farms of the people asking to borrow. He was a city man, a banker's man; we were not farmers and never pretended to be. But those weekend inspections became our family time. He would bring his sons along — we were six children, three boys and three girls — and while he walked the fields and looked over the livestock, he would let us swim, let us play, let us be boys in the countryside. And sometimes, in the way of the provinces, the farmers he visited would thank him with a gift — a chicken, some livestock, a token of gratitude carried home. That is how the first chickens of my life arrived. Not as fighters. Not as champions. As gifts, ordinary as a basket of fruit. So animals were never strange to me. But if you had asked me, as a grown man, what creature I loved most, I would not have said the rooster at all. **I would have said the racing pigeon.** By then I had built WaveNet — my internet company, which I put up in 1997 — and being an internet man meant I could chase any interest as far as my curiosity would take me. And my interest, in those days, was pigeons. The homing pigeon, the racer, the bird that finds its way home across impossible distances. That was my passion. Not sabong. Not yet. The turn — the real beginning of everything in this book — came through my son. **He was about two years old.** We were visiting his grandmother, my mother, and his cousins out in the province, where the men do what provincial men have always done for leisure on a weekend: they set two roosters against each other in the yard and gather around to watch. My little boy — Odaz, though back then he was just my baby — saw those two roosters fight. And he came alive. He shouted, he pointed, he called everyone to come and see, the way only a small child can, as if he had discovered something the whole world needed to know about. I ran to him. I will admit it — I was a worried father, and I did not like him so close to two fighting birds. I went to pull him back, and instead he threw his arms around me. Then, still lit up with excitement, he asked me — the way a child asks for a toy — if he could have a chicken of his own. What kind of father says no to that? So I bought him a little rooster. A small thing, a pet. And for a while that was the end of it — just a boy and his bird. Until one ordinary day I came home from the office, and my son was upset. His rooster, he told me, had been beaten — *tremendously* beaten — by the neighbor's rooster. I went to look, half expecting some fearsome bird next door. But the rooster that had humbled my son's pet was nothing special at all. Just a plain, ordinary neighborhood chicken. I want you to understand what that did to me, because it is the hinge the whole story turns on. It was a small thing. A backyard scuffle between two birds. But it stung me — not for myself, for *him*. My boy had asked me for one thing, and the one thing I gave him had lost to an ordinary rooster. And something in me, the same something that would later drive everything I did in this sport, decided: *my son will not have an ordinary bird. My son will have the best fowl the Philippines can offer.* And so I did the only thing I knew how to do. **I went to the internet to find it.** Remember — I was not an ordinary man searching. I was an internet pioneer, sitting at the on-ramp of Philippine connectivity, with the whole young web at my fingertips at a time when most of the country had never seen it. I searched for the greatest fighting bloodline in the Philippines. And the name that rose up out of that search was one I would chase for years to come: the **Zamboanga White**. But here is the thing I did not expect. When I went looking for the Zamboanga White, I did not find a quiet catalog of birds. I walked straight into a *war* — a heated online debate raging between American breeders and Filipino gamefowl enthusiasts over the true origins of that very bloodline. Who bred it first. Where it truly came from. Whose it really was. I did not know it then, but that argument would change my life. Because my voice in that debate — a father just trying to learn — is what caught the attention of a woman named **Princess Naldo**, a breeder who held the very line I was chasing. And she did something that opened every door that followed. She invited me to her farm. --- Hold that image, because everything grows from it: not a lifelong sabungero, but a pigeon-racing internet man; not a grand plan, but a two-year-old's toy rooster beaten by an ordinary bird; not a cockpit, but a search bar. I entered this ancient sport the way no one before me had — *through the internet*, before I had ever set foot in a real derby. That is not a small detail. It is the whole thesis of this book in miniature. The man who would one day help bring all of sabong online had himself come into sabong *online* first. The medium and the message, tangled together from the very first day. There is one more thing I should tell you now, so you understand why this book exists and why it is written the way it is. That two-year-old boy — the one whose beaten rooster sent me searching — grew up. His name is Odaz. And as I sit h# How Sabong Came Online ### *A Pioneer's History* **by Ricardo R. "Eric" Canonizado** — *Spurblade* --- ## Chapter 1 — A Father's Errand Every big story in my life, it turns out, began as something small. This one began with a little boy, a toy rooster, and a defeat. But let me be honest with you from the very first page, because this book is nothing if it is not honest: I did not begin as a sabungero. That may surprise the people who know me now, who know me as *Spurblade*, who know the forums and the websites and the years I gave to this sport. But it is the truth. The love of the fightingcock did not come to me at birth, the way it comes to so many Filipino men, passed down quietly like a surname. It came to me later, and it came through my son. Let me take you back further, so you understand the soil it grew from. **Animals were always ordinary in our house.** My father, Emilio Canonizado, was a banker — a loan examiner at the Development Bank of the Philippines. His work was to study loan applications, and part of that work was to go out on weekends and inspect the farms of the people asking to borrow. He was a city man, a banker's man; we were not farmers and never pretended to be. But those weekend inspections became our family time. He would bring his sons along — we were six children, three boys and three girls — and while he walked the fields and looked over the livestock, he would let us swim, let us play, let us be boys in the countryside. And sometimes, in the way of the provinces, the farmers he visited would thank him with a gift — a chicken, some livestock, a token of gratitude carried home. That is how the first chickens of my life arrived. Not as fighters. Not as champions. As gifts, ordinary as a basket of fruit. So animals were never strange to me. But if you had asked me, as a grown man, what creature I loved most, I would not have said the rooster at all. **I would have said the racing pigeon.** By then I had built WaveNet — my internet company, which I put up in 1997 — and being an internet man meant I could chase any interest as far as my curiosity would take me. And my interest, in those days, was pigeons. The homing pigeon, the racer, the bird that finds its way home across impossible distances. That was my passion. Not sabong. Not yet. The turn — the real beginning of everything in this book — came through my son. **He was about two years old.** We were visiting his grandmother, my mother, and his cousins out in the province, where the men do what provincial men have always done for leisure on a weekend: they set two roosters against each other in the yard and gather around to watch. My little boy — Odaz, though back then he was just my baby — saw those two roosters fight. And he came alive. He shouted, he pointed, he called everyone to come and see, the way only a small child can, as if he had discovered something the whole world needed to know about. I ran to him. I will admit it — I was a worried father, and I did not like him so close to two fighting birds. I went to pull him back, and instead he threw his arms around me. Then, still lit up with excitement, he asked me — the way a child asks for a toy — if he could have a chicken of his own. What kind of father says no to that? So I bought him a little rooster. A small thing, a pet. And for a while that was the end of it — just a boy and his bird. Until one ordinary day I came home from the office, and my son was upset. His rooster, he told me, had been beaten — *tremendously* beaten — by the neighbor's rooster. I went to look, half expecting some fearsome bird next door. But the rooster that had humbled my son's pet was nothing special at all. Just a plain, ordinary neighborhood chicken. I want you to understand what that did to me, because it is the hinge the whole story turns on. It was a small thing. A backyard scuffle between two birds. But it stung me — not for myself, for *him*. My boy had asked me for one thing, and the one thing I gave him had lost to an ordinary rooster. And something in me, the same something that would later drive everything I did in this sport, decided: *my son will not have an ordinary bird. My son will have the best fowl the Philippines can offer.* And so I did the only thing I knew how to do. **I went to the internet to find it.** Remember — I was not an ordinary man searching. I was an internet pioneer, sitting at the on-ramp of Philippine connectivity, with the whole young web at my fingertips at a time when most of the country had never seen it. I searched for the greatest fighting bloodline in the Philippines. And the name that rose up out of that search was one I would chase for years to come: the **Zamboanga White**. But here is the thing I did not expect. When I went looking for the Zamboanga White, I did not find a quiet catalog of birds. I walked straight into a *war* — a heated online debate raging between American breeders and Filipino gamefowl enthusiasts over the true origins of that very bloodline. Who bred it first. Where it truly came from. Whose it really was. I did not know it then, but that argument would change my life. Because my voice in that debate — a father just trying to learn — is what caught the attention of a woman named **Princess Naldo**, a breeder who held the very line I was chasing. And she did something that opened every door that followed. She invited me to her farm. --- Hold that image, because everything grows from it: not a lifelong sabungero, but a pigeon-racing internet man; not a grand plan, but a two-year-old's toy rooster beaten by an ordinary bird; not a cockpit, but a search bar. I entered this ancient sport the way no one before me had — *through the internet*, before I had ever set foot in a real derby. That is not a small detail. It is the whole thesis of this book in miniature. The man who would one day help bring all of sabong online had himself come into sabong *online* first. The medium and the message, tangled together from the very first day. There is one more thing I should tell you now, so you understand why this book exists and why it is written the way it is. That two-year-old boy — the one whose beaten rooster sent me searching — grew up. His name is Odaz. And as I sit here setting these memories down, I am typing them on *his* laptop. The very machine this history is being written on belongs to the child the whole journey began for. I went hunting a champion for him when he could barely walk. Decades later, it is through him, and through his machine, that the story is finally told. A man does not often get to see his beginnings and his endings touch like that. I am grateful that I have. So this is where we start: a banker's son who loved pigeons, a little boy who loved a rooster, and an ordinary defeat that would not let me rest. Everything else — the farm in Muntinlupa, the man named Lando, the forums, the Cyberfriends, the fallings-out, and the backyard breeders who became icons — all of it grew from this one small, ordinary, loving errand. Let me take you there. --- *[Chapter 1 of 13 · Voice: Eric, first person · Next: Chapter 2 — "The Man Who Wired the Nation."]*

ere setting these memories down, I am typing them on *his* laptop. The very machine this history is being written on belongs to the child the whole journey began for. I went hunting a champion for him when he could barely walk. Decades later, it is through him, and through his machine, that the story is finally told. A man does not often get to see his beginnings and his endings touch like that. I am grateful that I have. So this is where we start: a banker's son who loved pigeons, a little boy who loved a rooster, and an ordinary defeat that would not let me rest. Everything else — the farm in Muntinlupa, the man named Lando, the forums, the Cyberfriends, the fallings-out, and the backyard breeders who became icons — all of it grew from this one small, ordinary, loving errand. Let me take you there. --- *[Chapter 1 of 13 · Voice: Eric, first person · Next: Chapter 2 — "The Man Who Wired the Nation."]*

ow Sabong Came Online

### # How Sabong Came Online
### *A # How Sabong Came Online
### *A Pioneer's History*
**by Ricardo R. "Eric" Canonizado** — *Spurblade*

---

## Chapter 1 — A Father's Errand

Every big story in my life, it turns out, began as something small. This one began with a little boy, a toy rooster, and a defeat.

But let me be honest with you from the very first page, because this book is nothing if it is not honest: I did not begin as a sabungero. That may surprise the people who know me now, who know me as *Spurblade*, who know the forums and the websites and the years I gave to this sport. But it is the truth. The love of the fightingcock did not come to me at birth, the way it comes to so many Filipino men, passed down quietly like a surname. It came to me later, and it came through my son.

Let me take you back further, so you understand the soil it grew from.

**Animals were always ordinary in our house.** My father, Emilio Canonizado, was a banker — a loan examiner at the Development Bank of the Philippines. His work was to study loan applications, and part of that work was to go out on weekends and inspect the farms of the people asking to borrow. He was a city man, a banker's man; we were not farmers and never pretended to be. But those weekend inspections became our family time. He would bring his sons along — we were six children, three boys and three girls — and while he walked the fields and looked over the livestock, he would let us swim, let us play, let us be boys in the countryside.

And sometimes, in the way of the provinces, the farmers he visited would thank him with a gift — a chicken, some livestock, a token of gratitude carried home. That is how the first chickens of my life arrived. Not as fighters. Not as champions. As gifts, ordinary as a basket of fruit.

So animals were never strange to me. But if you had asked me, as a grown man, what creature I loved most, I would not have said the rooster at all. **I would have said the racing pigeon.**

By then I had built WaveNet — my internet company, which I put up in 1997 — and being an internet man meant I could chase any interest as far as my curiosity would take me. And my interest, in those days, was pigeons. The homing pigeon, the racer, the bird that finds its way home across impossible distances. That was my passion. Not sabong. Not yet.

The turn — the real beginning of everything in this book — came through my son.

**He was about two years old.** We were visiting his grandmother, my mother, and his cousins out in the province, where the men do what provincial men have always done for leisure on a weekend: they set two roosters against each other in the yard and gather around to watch. My little boy — Odaz, though back then he was just my baby — saw those two roosters fight. And he came alive. He shouted, he pointed, he called everyone to come and see, the way only a small child can, as if he had discovered something the whole world needed to know about.

I ran to him. I will admit it — I was a worried father, and I did not like him so close to two fighting birds. I went to pull him back, and instead he threw his arms around me. Then, still lit up with excitement, he asked me — the way a child asks for a toy — if he could have a chicken of his own.

What kind of father says no to that?

So I bought him a little rooster. A small thing, a pet. And for a while that was the end of it — just a boy and his bird.

Until one ordinary day I came home from the office, and my son was upset. His rooster, he told me, had been beaten — *tremendously* beaten — by the neighbor's rooster. I went to look, half expecting some fearsome bird next door. But the rooster that had humbled my son's pet was nothing special at all. Just a plain, ordinary neighborhood chicken.

I want you to understand what that did to me, because it is the hinge the whole story turns on. It was a small thing. A backyard scuffle between two birds. But it stung me — not for myself, for *him*. My boy had asked me for one thing, and the one thing I gave him had lost to an ordinary rooster. And something in me, the same something that would later drive everything I did in this sport, decided: *my son will not have an ordinary bird. My son will have the best fowl the Philippines can offer.*

And so I did the only thing I knew how to do. **I went to the internet to find it.**

Remember — I was not an ordinary man searching. I was an internet pioneer, sitting at the on-ramp of Philippine connectivity, with the whole young web at my fingertips at a time when most of the country had never seen it. I searched for the greatest fighting bloodline in the Philippines. And the name that rose up out of that search was one I would chase for years to come: the **Zamboanga White**.

But here is the thing I did not expect. When I went looking for the Zamboanga White, I did not find a quiet catalog of birds. I walked straight into a *war* — a heated online debate raging between American breeders and Filipino gamefowl enthusiasts over the true origins of that very bloodline. Who bred it first. Where it truly came from. Whose it really was.

I did not know it then, but that argument would change my life. Because my voice in that debate — a father just trying to learn — is what caught the attention of a woman named **Princess Naldo**, a breeder who held the very line I was chasing. And she did something that opened every door that followed.

She invited me to her farm.

---

Hold that image, because everything grows from it: not a lifelong sabungero, but a pigeon-racing internet man; not a grand plan, but a two-year-old's toy rooster beaten by an ordinary bird; not a cockpit, but a search bar. I entered this ancient sport the way no one before me had — *through the internet*, before I had ever set foot in a real derby.

That is not a small detail. It is the whole thesis of this book in miniature. The man who would one day help bring all of sabong online had himself come into sabong *online* first. The medium and the message, tangled together from the very first day.

There is one more thing I should tell you now, so you understand why this book exists and why it is written the way it is.

That two-year-old boy — the one whose beaten rooster sent me searching — grew up. His name is Odaz. And as I sit here setting these memories down, I am typing them on *his* laptop. The very machine this history is being written on belongs to the child the whole journey began for. I went hunting a champion for him when he could barely walk. Decades later, it is through him, and through his machine, that the story is finally told.

A man does not often get to see his beginnings and his endings touch like that. I am grateful that I have.

So this is where we start: a banker's son who loved pigeons, a little boy who loved a rooster, and an ordinary defeat that would not let me rest. Everything else — the farm in Muntinlupa, the man named Lando, the forums, the Cyberfriends, the fallings-out, and the backyard breeders who became icons — all of it grew from this one small, ordinary, loving errand.

Let me take you there.
Pioneer's History*
**by Ricardo R. "Eric" Canonizado** — *Spurblade*

---

## Chapter 1 — A Father's Errand

Every big story in my life, it turns out, began as something small. This one began with a little boy, a toy rooster, and a defeat.

But let me be honest with you from the very first page, because this book is nothing if it is not honest: I did not begin as a sabungero. That may surprise the people who know me now, who know me as *Spurblade*, who know the forums and the websites and the years I gave to this sport. But it is the truth. The love of the fightingcock did not come to me at birth, the way it comes to so many Filipino men, passed down quietly like a surname. It came to me later, and it came through my son.

Let me take you back further, so you understand the soil it grew from.

**Animals were always ordinary in our house.** My father, Emilio Canonizado, was a banker — a loan examiner at the Development Bank of the Philippines. His work was to study loan applications, and part of that work was to go out on weekends and inspect the farms of the people asking to borrow. He was a city man, a banker's man; we were not farmers and never pretended to be. But those weekend inspections became our family time. He would bring his sons along — we were six children, three boys and three girls — and while he walked the fields and looked over the livestock, he would let us swim, let us play, let us be boys in the countryside.

And sometimes, in the way of the provinces, the farmers he visited would thank him with a gift — a chicken, some livestock, a token of gratitude carried home. That is how the first chickens of my life arrived. Not as fighters. Not as champions. As gifts, ordinary as a basket of fruit.

So animals were never strange to me. But if you had asked me, as a grown man, what creature I loved most, I would not have said the rooster at all. **I would have said the racing pigeon.**

By then I had built WaveNet — my internet company, which I put up in 1997 — and being an internet man meant I could chase any interest as far as my curiosity would take me. And my interest, in those days, was pigeons. The homing pigeon, the racer, the bird that finds its way home across impossible distances. That was my passion. Not sabong. Not yet.

The turn — the real beginning of everything in this book — came through my son.

**He was about two years old.** We were visiting his grandmother, my mother, and his cousins out in the province, where the men do what provincial men have always done for leisure on a weekend: they set two roosters against each other in the yard and gather around to watch. My little boy — Odaz, though back then he was just my baby — saw those two roosters fight. And he came alive. He shouted, he pointed, he called everyone to come and see, the way only a small child can, as if he had discovered something the whole world needed to know about.

I ran to him. I will admit it — I was a worried father, and I did not like him so close to two fighting birds. I went to pull him back, and instead he threw his arms around me. Then, still lit up with excitement, he asked me — the way a child asks for a toy — if he could have a chicken of his own.

What kind of father says no to that?

So I bought him a little rooster. A small thing, a pet. And for a while that was the end of it — just a boy and his bird.

Until one ordinary day I came home from the office, and my son was upset. His rooster, he told me, had been beaten — *tremendously* beaten — by the neighbor's rooster. I went to look, half expecting some fearsome bird next door. But the rooster that had humbled my son's pet was nothing special at all. Just a plain, ordinary neighborhood chicken.

I want you to understand what that did to me, because it is the hinge the whole story turns on. It was a small thing. A backyard scuffle between two birds. But it stung me — not for myself, for *him*. My boy had asked me for one thing, and the one thing I gave him had lost to an ordinary rooster. And something in me, the same something that would later drive everything I did in this sport, decided: *my son will not have an ordinary bird. My son will have the best fowl the Philippines can offer.*

And so I did the only thing I knew how to do. **I went to the internet to find it.**

Remember — I was not an ordinary man searching. I was an internet pioneer, sitting at the on-ramp of Philippine connectivity, with the whole young web at my fingertips at a time when most of the country had never seen it. I searched for the greatest fighting bloodline in the Philippines. And the name that rose up out of that search was one I would chase for years to come: the **Zamboanga White**.

But here is the thing I did not expect. When I went looking for the Zamboanga White, I did not find a quiet catalog of birds. I walked straight into a *war* — a heated online debate raging between American breeders and Filipino gamefowl enthusiasts over the true origins of that very bloodline. Who bred it first. Where it truly came from. Whose it really was.

I did not know it then, but that argument would change my life. Because my voice in that debate — a father just trying to learn — is what caught the attention of a woman named **Princess Naldo**, a breeder who held the very line I was chasing. And she did something that opened every door that followed.

She invited me to her farm.

---

Hold that image, because everything grows from it: not a lifelong sabungero, but a pigeon-racing internet man; not a grand plan, but a two-year-old's toy rooster beaten by an ordinary bird; not a cockpit, but a search bar. I entered this ancient sport the way no one before me had — *through the internet*, before I had ever set foot in a real derby.

That is not a small detail. It is the whole thesis of this book in miniature. The man who would one day help bring all of sabong online had himself come into sabong *online* first. The medium and the message, tangled together from the very first day.

There is one more thing I should tell you now, so you understand why this book exists and why it is written the way it is.

That two-year-old boy — the one whose beaten rooster sent me searching — grew up. His name is Odaz. And as I sit here setting these memories down, I am typing them on *his* laptop. The very machine this history is being written on belongs to the child the whole journey began for. I went hunting a champion for him when he could barely walk. Decades later, it is through him, and through his machine, that the story is finally told.

A man does not often get to see his beginnings and his endings touch like that. I am grateful that I have.

So this is where we start: a banker's son who loved pigeons, a little boy who loved a rooster, and an ordinary defeat that would not let me rest. Everything else — the farm in Muntinlupa, the man named Lando, the forums, the Cyberfriends, the fallings-out, and the backyard breeders who became icons — all of it grew from this one small, ordinary, loving errand.

Let me take you there.
*A Pioneer's History*
**by Ricardo R. "Eric" Canonizado** — *Spurblade*

---

## Chapter 1 — A Father's Errand

Every big story in my life, it turns out, began as something small. This one began with a little boy, a toy rooster, and a defeat.

But let me be honest with you from the very first page, because this book is nothing if it is not honest: I did not begin as a sabungero. That may surprise the people who know me now, who know me as *Spurblade*, who know the forums and the websites and the years I gave to this sport. But it is the truth. The love of the fightingcock did not come to me at birth, the way it comes to so many Filipino men, passed down quietly like a surname. It came to me later, and it came through my son.

Let me take you back further, so you understand the soil it grew from.

**Animals were always ordinary in our house.** My father, Emilio Canonizado, was a banker — a loan examiner at the Development Bank of the Philippines. His work was to study loan applications, and part of that work was to go out on weekends and inspect the farms of the people asking to borrow. He was a city man, a banker's man; we were not farmers and never pretended to be. But those weekend inspections became our family time. He would bring his sons along — we were six children, three boys and three girls — and while he walked the fields and looked over the livestock, he would let us swim, let us play, let us be boys in the countryside.

And sometimes, in the way of the provinces, the farmers he visited would thank him with a gift — a chicken, some livestock, a token of gratitude carried home. That is how the first chickens of my life arrived. Not as fighters. Not as champions. As gifts, ordinary as a basket of fruit.

So animals were never strange to me. But if you had asked me, as a grown man, what creature I loved most, I would not have said the rooster at all. **I would have said the racing pigeon.**

By then I had built WaveNet — my internet company, which I put up in 1997 — and being an internet man meant I could chase any interest as far as my curiosity would take me. And my interest, in those days, was pigeons. The homing pigeon, the racer, the bird that finds its way home across impossible distances. That was my passion. Not sabong. Not yet.

The turn — the real beginning of everything in this book — came through my son.

**He was about two years old.** We were visiting his grandmother, my mother, and his cousins out in the province, where the men do what provincial men have always done for leisure on a weekend: they set two roosters against each other in the yard and gather around to watch. My little boy — Odaz, though back then he was just my baby — saw those two roosters fight. And he came alive. He shouted, he pointed, he called everyone to come and see, the way only a small child can, as if he had discovered something the whole world needed to know about.

I ran to him. I will admit it — I was a worried father, and I did not like him so close to two fighting birds. I went to pull him back, and instead he threw his arms around me. Then, still lit up with excitement, he asked me — the way a child asks for a toy — if he could have a chicken of his own.

What kind of father says no to that?

So I bought him a little rooster. A small thing, a pet. And for a while that was the end of it — just a boy and his bird.

Until one ordinary day I came home from the office, and my son was upset. His rooster, he told me, had been beaten — *tremendously* beaten — by the neighbor's rooster. I went to look, half expecting some fearsome bird next door. But the rooster that had humbled my son's pet was nothing special at all. Just a plain, ordinary neighborhood chicken.

I want you to understand what that did to me, because it is the hinge the whole story turns on. It was a small thing. A backyard scuffle between two birds. But it stung me — not for myself, for *him*. My boy had asked me for one thing, and the one thing I gave him had lost to an ordinary rooster. And something in me, the same something that would later drive everything I did in this sport, decided: *my son will not have an ordinary bird. My son will have the best fowl the Philippines can offer.*

And so I did the only thing I knew how to do. **I went to the internet to find it.**

Remember — I was not an ordinary man searching. I was an internet pioneer, sitting at the on-ramp of Philippine connectivity, with the whole young web at my fingertips at a time when most of the country had never seen it. I searched for the greatest fighting bloodline in the Philippines. And the name that rose up out of that search was one I would chase for years to come: the **Zamboanga White**.

But here is the thing I did not expect. When I went looking for the Zamboanga White, I did not find a quiet catalog of birds. I walked straight into a *war* — a heated online debate raging between American breeders and Filipino gamefowl enthusiasts over the true origins of that very bloodline. Who bred it first. Where it truly came from. Whose it really was.

I did not know it then, but that argument would change my life. Because my voice in that debate — a father just trying to learn — is what caught the attention of a woman named **Princess Naldo**, a breeder who held the very line I was chasing. And she did something that opened every door that followed.

She invited me to her farm.

---

Hold that image, because everything grows from it: not a lifelong sabungero, but a pigeon-racing internet man; not a grand plan, but a two-year-old's toy rooster beaten by an ordinary bird; not a cockpit, but a search bar. I entered this ancient sport the way no one before me had — *through the internet*, before I had ever set foot in a real derby.

That is not a small detail. It is the whole thesis of this book in miniature. The man who would one day help bring all of sabong online had himself come into sabong *online* first. The medium and the message, tangled together from the very first day.

There is one more thing I should tell you now, so you understand why this book exists and why it is written the way it is.

That two-year-old boy — the one whose beaten rooster sent me searching — grew up. His name is Odaz. And as I sit here setting these memories down, I am typing them on *his* laptop. The very machine this history is being written on belongs to the child the whole journey began for. I went hunting a champion for him when he could barely walk. Decades later, it is through him, and through his machine, that the story is finally told.

A man does not often get to see his beginnings and his endings touch like that. I am grateful that I have.

So this is where we start: a banker's son who loved pigeons, a little boy who loved a rooster, and an ordinary defeat that would not let me rest. Everything else — the farm in Muntinlupa, the man named Lando, the forums, the Cyberfriends, the fallings-out, and the backyard breeders who became icons — all of it grew from this one small, ordinary, loving errand.

Let me take you there.

Building the scoreboard application

 

I have been building this application since I was a member of a group before. And now that  have been doing a lot of programming along the side, I guess I want to share it to my comunity for I have a bigger plan in the future where I can program its result in the new age of Artifical Intelligence. therefore I am inviting those individual who would like to collaborte and be an active developer in this endeavor. Below is a written comment exolining how I have built theprogram, and fee free to comment on it to make it more robust and applicable.

Create an website where a member can login and watch a coreboard for a derby event hosted by an organization. It wil bear the event title, location of the arena and the date. It will first ask how many stags the event will be amd upload the list of members participating on the derby with its entry name, members name, email and contact number, the scoreboard will bear the wing band number of its stag to be fought , the leg number, feather color, type of comb, whether straight or pea,leg color, breed, farm ocation, weight, and owner. It will match the entry based on weight and the min bet capacity, there will also a field for the eronand wala category in the scoreboard which will tag the entries which corner or position they are marked according to which has a bigger bet between the matched fight where the bigger bet will be meron. There will also be a column where you can put a check to whoever wins the fight, a final print out of the result ca be generated at the end of the event. A pe chart will be displayed below the chart between the meron and wala winnings.

Thanks and hoping to develop it to s many collabolators as I can

Magic Light AI Platform Analysis

Executive Summary

This document provides a comprehensive analysis of the Magic Light AI platform, a tool designed to convert text scripts into animated videos. The platform streamlines the creation process by automatically generating visuals, voiceovers, subtitles, and animations from user-provided stories, with a stated capability of producing videos up to 30 minutes in length.The core functionality is divided into two primary features: character creation and video generation. The platform is highly specialized for storytelling, emphasizing character consistency and dynamic visual engagement while minimizing extraneous features. Users can create custom characters using AI-assisted prompts, which are then stored for use in videos. The video creation workflow involves inputting a script (either user-written or AI-generated), which the system automatically segments into scenes. For each scene, the AI generates corresponding images featuring the assigned characters.A key aspect of the platform is its freemium model, governed by a points system. New users receive 300 free points to test the features. The free version has limitations, including a 1-minute cap on AI-generated scripts, 720p video resolution, and a single-use credit for the advanced "Animate Pro" feature. The source's assessment concludes that the platform can produce "quite good" results even on the free tier, with the limited animation significantly enhancing the final product's quality. For full capabilities, including unlimited advanced animation and higher resolution, users must upgrade to a paid subscription plan.

Core Platform Functionality

Primary Purpose and Specialization

Magic Light AI is an AI-powered tool engineered specifically for creating animated storytelling videos. Its central value proposition is enabling users with no editing skills to transform a script into a complete animated video with minimal effort.

• Automated Production:  The platform automates the entire production pipeline, including visuals, voiceovers, subtitles, and transitions.

• Storytelling Focus:  The software is described as "specially designed to create storytelling videos," intentionally omitting features that might distract from this core purpose. This focus is intended to enhance character consistency and create a more dynamic and engaging final video.

• User-Generated Content Library:  The homepage features a library of videos created by other users, serving as a source of inspiration and demonstrating the platform's capabilities.

Key Features

The platform's interface centers on two main functions:

1. Create a Character:  Users can design and save custom characters for their stories. This feature uses AI to expand upon simple user prompts to generate detailed character descriptions and visuals. Created characters are stored in a personal library for consistent use across scenes and projects.

2. Create a Video from a Story:  This is the primary function, guiding the user through a step-by-step process of turning a script into a finished video. It manages scripting, scene generation, character assignment, image creation, animation, and final rendering.

Detailed Workflow: Video and Character Creation

The process of creating a video is structured into a logical sequence of steps, from initial setup to final export.

Step 1: Account Setup

• Users can register for a free account using a Google account, Discord account, or an email address.

• Upon registration, a new account is credited with 300 points to utilize the platform's features.

Step 2: Character Creation

1. Process:

2. Name & Prompt:  The user provides a name and a short descriptive prompt (e.g., "a child").

3. AI Expansion:  An "AI expand" function automatically develops the simple prompt into a more detailed one.

4. Style Selection:  The user chooses a visual style, such as "3D cartoon."

5. Generation:  The platform generates the character image. This action costs 5 points on the free plan but is free for Pro account users.

6. Review & Save:  The user can accept the generated character or edit the prompt to try again. Once accepted, the character can be saved as public (for others to use) or private.

7. Storage:  All created characters are stored in the user's "My characters" asset library for easy access during video creation.

Step 3: Video Generation

• Script Input:

• Smart Script:  The user provides a brief idea, and the AI generates a full script. The free version is limited to generating scripts for 1-minute videos; longer formats (3, 5, or 30 minutes) require a paid plan.

• Basic Script:  The user can paste a pre-written script directly into the editor. This option supports up to 3,000 characters.

• Initial Setup:  Users configure basic video settings, including aspect ratio (landscape or portrait), language, and video style ("3D cartoon" is used in the demonstration).

• Scene Management:  The software automatically divides the script into individual scenes, typically one per line. This is designed to create a more dynamic video by generating a unique image for each line. Users have the option to merge scenes if desired.

• Character Assignment and Image Generation:

• Before generating visuals, users must assign characters to the scenes. Characters can be selected from the user's personal library or the platform's public library.

• The system then generates an image for each of the script's scenes.

• Limitation:  A critical constraint is noted: only two characters from the saved library can be accurately represented in a single image. If a scene requires a third character, the system will automatically generate a new one instead of using a third character from the library.

• Revision:  Users can review each image and regenerate any that are not satisfactory. Regenerating an image costs 2 points on the free plan.

• Animation:

• Options:  The platform offers several animation tools, including LipSync, Animate Pro, Hyul, and Cling. The latter two are described as more powerful but require a paid plan.

• Free Plan Limitation:  The free plan includes only  one  complimentary use of the "Animate Pro" feature. All other scenes in a video created on the free plan will remain as static images with basic zoom or pan effects.

• Finalization and Export:

• The final stage involves adding a thumbnail, selecting a subtitle style, and choosing background music.

• The video is then rendered. Free users are limited to 720p resolution, while Full HD is a paid feature. The completed video can be downloaded or made public on the Magic Light AI platform.

Assessment and Output Quality

The source provides a direct evaluation of the video produced using only the free features of the platform.

• Overall Verdict:  The final result is deemed "quite good, especially considering it's 100% free."

• Impact of Animation:  The single scene animated with the "Animate Pro" credit is highlighted as a standout element that "adds so much life to the story," underscoring the value of the paid animation features.

• Resource Consumption:  The demonstration project, which included creating two characters and regenerating at least one image, consumed approximately 200 of the initial 300 free points.

Pricing and Monetization Model

Magic Light AI operates on a freemium model based on a point system and monthly/annual subscriptions.

Points System

• Points are the currency used to perform actions like character creation, image regeneration, and using advanced features.

• New free accounts start with 300 points.

• Paid plans provide a substantial monthly allocation of points.

Subscription Tiers

The following monthly pricing plans are outlined:| Plan | Monthly Cost | Monthly Points || ------ | ------ | ------ || Standard | $9.50 | 5,000 || Plus | $19.00 | 15,000 || Pro | $28.50 | 30,000 |

Available Discounts

• Annual Payment:  Opting for an annual subscription provides a 20% discount on the total cost.

• Referral Code:  An additional 5% discount can be applied by using a specific referral code or by registering through a referral link.

Key Quotes and Statements

• On the Core Concept:  "this is Magic Light AI the tool that turns your words into eye-catching animated videos... No editing skills needed."

• On Platform Specialization:  "This software is specially designed to create storytelling videos... It only focuses on storytelling video creation. That's why it's very specialized in storytelling."

• On the Freemium Model:  "upgrading to a pro account will let you create characters for free but in this video I'll use only the free features. This is to give you a full demo and review of what's possible with the free version."

• On Animation Limitations:  "Magic Light offers one free use of Animate Pro... that's the only animated scene we can create in the free version. Other scenes remain static or with basic zoom pan effects."

• On Character Limitations:  "Note only two characters per image can use your saved character library. If there's a third the system will generate a new character automatically."

• On the Final Result:  "In my opinion the result is quite good especially considering it's 100% free. Only one part has animation... but that animated segment adds so much life to the story."