Delayed Liveblog on Pacquiao-Clottey!

(NOTE: I originally intended to liveblog the fight. But since the fight was such an interminable bore, allow me instead to allude to the interesting parts of the fight, all of which occurred in Autohaus BMW.)

This probably marks the first time that I have been dragged to a sporting event solely because of the enthusiasm of my friends and loved ones. Unlike my good friend Ralph, who prefers watching games where the probability of victory of his favored team is a 100%, I actually like watching sporting events precisely because there is no guarantee that my side will win. I would actually rank a Pacquiao-Clottey fight below a Nets-Wizards game, because in the latter, the desire to avoid the most embarrassing win-total in NBA history practically guarantees a passionate game, if one bereft of the skills and plays that characterize professional basketball.

Still, Jeroen has been one of my most consistent sporting event companions in the past five years. Moreover, Jeroen is Dutch, and a huge Manny Pacquiao fan. Jeroen's ardent support for Manny recalls a religious fervor of Nazarene proportions, and his love for his adopted country matches the outwardly patriotic pronunciations of any Filipino running for office this year. So yes, one could say that I was shamed into watching Pacquiao-Clottey.


My brother-in-law, Bodie, greets us just inside Autohaus BMW. He's in shorts and a t-shirt. He says he hasn't slept yet. He looks the way all Filipinos want Clottey to feel later. Good foreshadowing.

We're joined at our table by Blues Bad Boy, Joniver Robles. He also hasn't slept yet. He and Bodie ought to start a club. We devour a fantastic breakfast meal of Wagyu striploin, and are adequately lubricated with bottomless coffee. Someone just got knocked out, I think. We're not paying attention to the undercard bouts.

Brian Viloria is tiny beside Quinito Henson! He makes some good points though.

Tito Benjie Atilano just won a Nike Team Pacquiao jacket. Couldn't have happened to a nicer guy.



Iza Calzado just came in. I think she's a friend of Sherwin and his lovely wife, Tracy. She gamely poses for a picture. I'm not easily impressed by celebrities, but she's very gracious, and despite the dragging bore the fight eventually turned out to be, lively and cheerful. A class act through and through.

I'm just randomly constructing sentences because all the coffee I've drank has triggered a nervous energy that no amount of Pacquiao-Clottey pre-fight commentary can leech off. Bodie, Jeroen and Joniver are making fun of my attempts to connect to the internet.



My fellow Ondoy Relief Center veteran, and all around cool kid, Jared Joven is in the house!

My feeble attempts to connect to the internet were actually a blessing in disguise. While I appreciate Joshua Clottey's single-minded commitment to not getting knocked out, I could have done away with his single-minded commitment to never throw a punch. I think I actually slept through rounds 5,6, and 7. I hope Clottey enjoys his minor payday, because I don't think any big money fights will be coming his way anytime soon.


The fight was so boring, Jared and I had all the time in the world to pose for this picture.

All in all, this was a fight that could not, in any way, match the enthusiasm of its viewers. I hope Manny's subsequent opponents don't adopt the strategy that Clottey employed for this snooze fest. I will always respect a man's right to a decent livelihood, but this was ridiculous! It's almost as if Clottey didn't even want to try.

Champions

Last Sunday, I didn't just watch a boxing match. I witnessed a transformation. Two brutally skilled boxers, by virtue of their sublime dedication to professional brutality, became champions.

What does it mean to be a champion? Does it mean, simply, to win? Perhaps. And yet, even a slight perusal of recorded sporting history would yield the following observation: many of the champions whose greatness has stood the test of time did not possess sporting records untarnished by defeat. But they all possessed sporting records where their defeats were untarnished by surrender.

Boxing pundit Saad Farooqi wrote very movingly about what characterized the finest boxing champions that the modern world has been privileged to witness:

When one says Ali is the greatest fighter (regardless of whether one agrees or not) of all time we aren’t thinking of young Cassius Clay hammering Liston into submission. We aren’t thinking of the dance master blitzing his opponents from countless angles and directions. To tell the truth, we think Ali/Frazier or Ali/Foreman. We think of a heavier, slower aging boxer his skills no longer glossed with youth and speed. The Ali we call "The Greatest" is the boxer who stepped in the ring against an opponent no one gave him a chance to win and then winning it. That was what made him the greatest: courage. It was him proving to boxing pundits that you can never measure human spirit or guess what it is capable of...

And that’s what boxing is all about: courage and character. Miguel Cotto and Manny Pacquiao showed that throughout their fight. It’s not skill or power or technique that defines a boxer as much as it does his courage to do what most men and women won’t even dream about.

It is easier to understand this from the perspective of the valiant Cotto. He had every reason in the world to give up. He didn't. That took courage.

It is harder to understand this from the perspective of the victor. Manny Pacquiao won, and in a very convincing fashion. But that's not why he is, ultimately, a winner. Anyone can win due to an overwhelming display of talent, skill, and passion. But very few people win with a grace that ennobles both the victor and the vanquished. After the fight, Manny refused to crow about his victory.

“I always tell myself that I am just an ordinary fighter, but I have to beat the best fighters and sometimes I can,” he said.

Sometimes, those who believe that they are just ordinary people who, by virtue of their skill, passion and determination end up with the wonderful opportunity to compete at the highest level, end up as winners. But always, they end up as champions.

Photo Credits:

Picture of Manny Pacquiao and Miguel Cotto comes courtesy of GMA News.

Sometimes When We Touch

By now, I suppose everyone has seen the video of Manny Pacquiao serenading a worldwide audience with his interpretation of Sing-Along-Kot staple, Sometimes When we Touch. Just in case you haven't, please click on the embedded video below.



Many Filipinos of my acquaintance are quick to voice their reactions to Manny's performance on Jimmy Kimmel Live. Most negative reactions range from "Don't give up your day job" to "He's an embarrassment to the Filipino people." It is to those who belong in the latter extreme that I address this blog entry.

Conrado de Quiros once observed that "I’ve seen athletes turn from ferocious to meek when interviewed after stunning victories, finding the task of organizing their thoughts or expressing themselves in another language far more daunting than the challenge they had just faced. Pacquiao was not one of them. He was as fearless facing his interviewer as he was facing Ricky Hatton."

Manny's boundless confidence in himself led de Quiros to postulate that perhaps it is this hard earned self-assurance, this certainty in both his talent and his self-worth, that is Manny Pacquiao's biggest strength. To jaded eyes, it seems that majority of social structures in the Philippines are designed to reinforce a sense of inferiority, or at the very least, a limited and limiting understanding of "one's place" in life. Manny, like most world-class Filipino talents, refuses to see himself in those terms. As, de Quiros once again pointed out, "Though his answers were humble, his demeanor was not. He was unfazed by the crowd, he was unfazed by the cameras, he was unfazed by his English. They were merely of the order of facing another foe, not unlike the one in the ring, and vanquishing them."

Perhaps we should be less concerned about Manny's perceived inability to do justice to a sentimental old love song. Instead, maybe we should consider that we have the privilege of witnessing a world-class Filipino talent, by proving that he can fail at something, rectify an injustice deeper and more insidious than annihilating the opus penned by Dan Hill: that our understanding of ourselves as a people, and our supposed self-worth, is determined by how others perceive us.

Once again, Manny has done us proud. Even in supposed failure, he remains, unreservedly, Manny Pacquiao. Sometimes, we should be touched.