I did not watch the fight but saw after lunch on ANC that it was into the 12th round, meaning, the predictions that Manny Pacquiao would walk over Timothy Bradley had gone wild. Before the fight, some of our boxing experts were so sure the fight would not go the distance.
Then CNN said Manny had lost by a split decision, which GMA 7 confirmed three hours later, around three in the afternoon. My TV is ordinary, so I have no way of watching the fight play-by-play.
In Manny’s last fight, (early December 2011, which Rene Corona apparently wanted to watch live, but he had to rush home to vote for the lifting of the TRO that barred Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo from leaving the Philippines for some other country), I found something better to do: trip the light fantastic in a well-attended lunch-time ballroom “dancexercise” in Century Park. Even then it was clear that not everyone would stop for Manny, no longer seen as a true simon-pure, unlike when he was a hungry fighter. (The ostentation about a Hermes bag, Forbes Park, etc. had caught up with its downside.)
Manny wants to fight in November? And risk being carried out in a stretcher? Or joining the Wheelchair Club of Arroyo, Corona and Bradley? He should really leave with the audience still applauding.
For November, he should prepare well so as not to get knocked out. He should resign now as congressman, and return all his income and expenses as an absentee, unethical, ambitious, lecherous, womanizing, gambling, TV-hosting, preaching congressman, who has announced he wants to be vice president in 2016, until he was told that he would still be underage till then. A congressman must at least read the Constitution, which apparently is something that is not part of his multi-tasking.
American star athletes served in the US Congress—Bill Bradley (Princeton), Jim Bunning (Xavier U), etc., but they had the decency and breeding to finish their athletic career first, and not multi-task.
Our Manny may be getting the wrong advice.
—RENE A.V. SAGUISAG,
ravslaw@gmail.com