1st MassKara Billiards Tournament: Jundel Mazon of Cavite Wins

The 1st MassKara Billiards Tournament turned out to be a great success. The event started with 128 players, many of them giants in the world of billiards, including the Philippine legends and world champions Efren “Bata” Reyes and Francisco “Django” Bustamante. Read more.

• Read: Thousands of Bacolodnons Joined the Masskara Festival 2022 Kick-Off

The 1st Masskara Billiards Tournament

They flew in to Bacolod City from as far as Japan and Indonesia but on the fifth and final day of the 1^st Mayor Albee Benitez MassKara Billiards Tournament, the last man standing was Jundel Mazon from Cavite. He romped off with the P350,000 grand prize.

The ‘masters’ games brought in the crowd, and though they dominated the early matches, their torch died down on the fourth day. Bata Reyes was crushed by a newbie, 15-year-old AJ Manas from Antipolo. Despite Reyes’ departure from the tournament, that did not diminish the crowd, but rather, more came to see for themselves the boy wonder that eliminated the legend.

Manas played to the crowd as he also defeated national team player, Warren Kiamco in the best of 32 to advance to the quarterfinals. Manas will forever have the bragging rights though of playing and crushing a legend. However, his journey was halted by former Guinness world champion, Jundel Mazon who defeated the youngster with a score of 8-7.

The players got eliminated one by one and by late afternoon of Thursday, only eight players were left to vie for the quarterfinals. But after another round, Bustamante defeated Jerico Banares to face off with Bacolod’s pride, Johann Chua who eliminated, 17-year-old Jolo Aspuria in the semi-finals or the top 4 knockout game.

Meanwhile, Jundel Mazon and Rodrigo Geronimo played against each other after defeating Bonnie Penticase and Dean Mark Castronuevo respectively.

The Finals

With just four players left, it was exciting to watch Chua play against his national team coach, using skills and techniques that were probably passed to him by his mentor. Chua took on the lead immediately when Bustamante gave away the fourth set after he failed to land the 7^th ball, giving the younger player a lead of 3-1.

But while Bustamante came back strong to bring home the fifth set, he never recovered from his misses after Chua played strong and calculated, romping off the succeeding sets easily and finishing off the race to 9 with a final score of 9-2.

In the other table, Mazon and Geronimo started off tight with a score of 1 each and on the eighth set, they were still tied at 4-4 but eventually, Mazon went on to win the race to face off with Chua in the finals.

As soon as the final games started, Mazon showed dominance by immediately taking in the first five sets. Chua regained his standing by taking the 6^th set and the game became exciting as the Bacolod-born champ went off to win a few more sets. However, in the end, the 46-year-old Mazon took home the bacon with the final score of 9-5 and with it, the grand prize of P350,000.

As the runner-up, Chua gets P100,000 in cash prize.