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| It's Round 3 between Team Asia and Team Rest of the World in the Reyes Cup. Ivan Saldajeno |
MAKATI—The future of Southeast Asian billiards will battle the current superstars of the United States in the main event of Night 1 of the Reyes Cup at the Makati Coliseum.
Teenage sensations AJ Manas and Albert Januarta will face the American duo of Fedor Gorst and Shane Van Boening to cap a four-match fixture to start the third edition of the five-on-five billiards tournament pitting Team Asia and Team Rest of the World.
Matchroom Multi Sport CEO Emily Frazer made the announcement on Wednesday during the pre-match press conference of the four-day billiards event at the Holiday Inn and Suites Makati.
"I love this. This is brilliant. This is TV. This is box office," Frazer described the upcoming match as she revealed the entire Day 1 schedule.
Day 1 will begin with the traditional 5-on-5 battle followed by the doubles clash between the Filipino duo of Carlo Biado and Robbie Capito and the European tandem of Joshua Filler and Aleksa Pecelj.
Duong Quoc Hoang and Francisco Sanchez Ruiz clash in the lone singles match of the night right before the Manas-Januarta-versus-Gorst-Van Boening headliner.
Team Asia ruled the first two editions of the team billiards event organized in honor of legendary pool player Efren "Bata" Reyes.
However, many analysts think Team Rest of the World could finally beat Team Asia this year.
Team captain Ralf Souquet, though, downplayed the early analysis, saying, "On paper, we might look as the favorites. My team thinks they are the heavy favorites. However, I see it like it's an even match, to be honest. You know, it's a short race, race to five. It's a different format. If this is played in a regular tournament circumstance, I would say, yeah, we are the favorites. But in this kind of format, I think it's still a 50-50 thing."
Capito thinks the same, saying, "I don't think we're the underdogs first of all because all of us are playing well. AJ is playing well, Albert is playing well, we have the world champion (Biado) with us, we have the PLP (Premier League Pool) champion (Duong) with us. I just came from being the US Open runner-up, so we're all playing good. So we're totally not the underdogs here, and it's gonna be a fair match."
Each match in the Reyes Cup is a race to five racks, with the winning player or team giving their main squad a point.
Whoever team wins 11 matches will be declared the overall champion, with the top-performing player from that team to be named the Most Valuable Player.
Manas showed wisdom beyond his age last year as he was named the MVP in last year's Reyes Cup with a sensational super rookie performance.
For the second straight year, Django Bustamante serves as the team captain and de facto head coach for Team Asia.
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