SOMETIME in March when Manny Pacquiao meets challenger Joshua Clottey to defend his numerous titles yet another time, a new record will be set.
No, it will not be the 40,000 expected attendance ; although it will be a healthy number. Actually, depending on demand, the numbers could reach all the way to 100,000, which is the physical limit allowed by the Dallas Cowboys Stadium.
Neither will it be the orgy of lucre generation, what with pay-per-view, ticket sales, advertising revenue, on-site product placement, arena traffic (incidental sales and event sales), and so many other money-making opportunities that a singular fight makes possible. Don’t forget additional income generating events by Nike, San Miguel, No Fear, and all other brands Manny endorses. The fight will probably make at least the Top 10 Money Making Fights in History. Putting King Midas to shame, anything with Manny’s name on it turns golden.
Titles? Neither, still, will it be the number of titles our Pambansang Kamao will defend, we honestly don’t know which of the dozens of world titles he will put on the line, assuming he still holds them; we know he was at some point the WBO World welterweight champion, Ring Magazine light welterweight champion, and is also the former WBC World lightweight champion, WBC World super featherweight champion, IBF World super bantamweight champion, and WBC World flyweight champion, former Ring Magazine featherweight and super featherweight champion.
Practically everyone and his cousin now knows that he is not the first Pinoy, but the first anyone in history to win seven world titles in seven different weight divisions. No additional feathers in his cap in this area, but it’s a good guess.
The asterisk in this particular fight, against an up-and-comer with a healthy purse and teeming numbers of onlookers, is the expected record number of politicians and candidates for high public office that will first, be well-wishers on ringside before and during the fight, and impromptu Team Pacquiao wanna-bes and camera-hungry congratulators right there, scrambling to be in the ring, as soon as the match ends expectedly in a Pacquiao victory.
We don’t say this with sarcasm or irony although the situation is over-ripe and heavy with such; how idiosyncratic is it that people who are expected to campaign for votes tens of thousands of kilometers, literally an ocean away from their bailiwicks and constituents, are in a sports arena filled with non-voters, raising the gloved fists, sweaty arms and slick torso of a Visayan pugilist?
That is because, of course, this is no ordinary Visayan pugilist. Manny P has become the improbable Filipino icon of the 21st century, very nearly the Asian that gives this side of the globe its human face, the entity that currently provides around 85 million ethnic Pinoys all over the planet a distinct identity and national pride.
If you can believe it, Manny has the potential, if not the actual media power and savvy to eclipse both Michael Jordan and Tiger Woods, rivals the brilliance of Kobe Bryant, LeBron James and Dwayne Wade combined, and is almost literally in a league of and unto his own.
With compatriots we hardly knew in a far corner of the globe, we cheered, wept and embraced when Manny knocked an unsuspecting Ricky Hatton straight out of consciousness and into Dreamland late in the second round May last year.
We watched open mouthed on YouTube two Decembers ago as Manny outclassed, outsped and outpunched a clearly befuddled and confused former great Oscar dela Hoya for 11 rounds before the latter called it quits.
Again on YouTube just last November (we couldn’t afford pay-per-view and the nearest Pinoy’s house was more than a few blocks away) we cheered on our own and gaped in wonder as Manny weaved in and out, switched from puncher’s to boxer’s stances, and back, to keep Miguel Cotto off balance and made a bloody mess out of his face in the process, incredibly keeping his date to perform in his own concert barely a few hours after the fight.
With every punch landed, millions of Pinoys roar with gigil and delight. We grit our teeth and brace ourselves for every hit that Manny absorbs (computerized sensors record an average of 150 to 200 punches per fight; Manny is a good receiver as well as a giver), we jump for joy as a nation when the opponent totters dazed and glassy eyed, we thunder, tens of millions of us, when the vanquished finally drops to the canvas and Manny raises his arms to the heavens in supplication and thanksgiving.
Indeed, we cannot help but take it personally everytime Kuya Manny raises his bloody gloves in triumph each time. We celebrate in his every victory and dread his every (potential) defeat. Why is this so?
It’s probably more acute for us overseas, the swell of pride and ache of familiarity for things Filipino whenever impending news of a Pacquiao fight arrives and the day dawns. All Pinoys gather round flatscreens and a undefinable sense of community and kinship prevails.
Besides the personable nurses, efficient IT professionals, irrepressible teachers, incomparable caregivers and overachieving domestics that we are known for, Pinoys more often than not are overlooked, this is only a guess but sometimes we are a bit too efficient for our own good. We like to be team players. We prefer to be agreeable and not rock the boat.
Save for the historic 3000 pairs of shoes, the urban legend that both the Unabomber and Osama bin Laden had a Filipina wife, and the fact that the White House has a Pinay chef, don’t forget Leah S in Miss Saigon a decade ago, Pinoys don’t singularly get a chance to stand out head and shoulders above the rest of the class. Make no mistake, we all have something to be proud of. But Manny makes this so scintillatingly obvious, even for just the moment.
Everywhere we go, as soon as we introduce ourselves as Pinoy, especially to Mexican, Irish and Thai counterparts in the migrant forest, two words estabish rapport. Manny Pacquiao? Yes yes yes, and we adopt a mock boxer’s stance, which sends our acquaintance into howls of delight, I love your Manny Pacquiao, and no further effort to establish familiarity is necessary.
Boxing, athletics and excellence in such is universal. Even if your guy beats my guy any day of the week.
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Is it just us by the way or has Manny’s persistence with utang-na-loob psychically found more common ground with untold masses of his countrymen?
Before he became a household name 15 years ago, a dehydrated (from the battle to make 112 lbs), fatigued (from lack of sleep) and visibly stressed Manny lost the first of his titles to Medgoen Singsurat, and the Pambansang Kamao returned home with his head hung, back to being a nobody. Then Manila Mayor Lito Atienza slapped him on the back, encouraged him to hang on, pooh-poohed his incipient money woes, and even gifted him with a roof on his head.
The rest, as they say is history.
These days whenever Manny P comes home in triumph, before anything else, even before paying a sorely needed courtesy call to Ate Glow ( the media distraction is worth more than anything else ) he visits his former patron, in fact the latest victory parade in Quezon City ended (or started) at the DENR, where Sec. Atienza now holds office. Malimutan na lahat wag lang si Mayor.
It’s probably only the reflected pride, the sense of being Filipino, and the pagtanaw ng utang na luob that appeal to Filipinos all over the world whenever watching, discussing or even just reading about Manny P that makes such an impact, but you can be assured :
In Dubai, when their brown-skinned co-expats bully them, their employers tell them they can’t be paid as highly as their white-skinned colleagues, and when they sleep 8 to 12 to a room just to preserve the precious foreign exchange to be sent back home, our OFWs whisper : at least I still have Manny Pacquiao.
In Chicago, New York, L.A. and other First World outposts, when we work shifts no one else wants, get bypassed or overlooked come promotion time, simply because we are too polite to complain, when we turn the other cheek whenever we are slighted, mocked or made fun of, just because we are harmless little Pinoys, our migrant brothers and sisters can say: at least I still have Manny Pacquiao.
In Milan, London and Paris, when, living dangerously, we often change jobs at the wink of an eye, take any hardship and situation in stride, avoiding immigration, police and border authorities deftly expertly and as long as the mighty euro beckons, we live to fight the next day because our kapatid can still say to himself / herself : at least, I still have Manny Pacquiao.
In many ways and on many levels, Manny Pacquiao has become larger than life for us, but because he has, all throughout the twists and turns of his journey, remained all-too-human, he remains in our hearts.
We have become Manny Pacquiao, and Manny Pacquiao has become us.
Thanks for reading !
NOel
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