Think about it
Boxing
By Jun Velasco
“Sting like a bee, float like a butterfly,” Muhammad Ali
OUR sports columnist Jess Garcia dangled a not-too-easy to ignore bait last Saturday.
“Let’s meet Manny Pacquiao in La Trinidad,” he said.
Manny P, you know, has won many more fans lately, not with his raging fists, but, don’t look now, but with his conversion as a Bible-reading pugilist.
Is a “preaching boxer” a contradiction in terms?
Since Saturday was a free day, we were quickly off to Kennon Road and up to La Trinidad, with Dr. (of Philosophy) Cathy, colleague Cesar Carpio and, of course, the inimitable Jess Garcia.
We had no idea why the venue was La Trinidad, not Baguio City, particularly, the Cordillera Career Development College.
But it was fun. We’re familiar with La Trinidad’s former late Mayor Larry Pawid. And it was also in La Trinidad where we regularly drove Cathy to her masteral and doctoral courses at the Benguet State University.
In between “duty” as personal driver, we met with had routine afternoon coffee bouts at Session Road with Baguio’s top journalists the likes of Pepot Ilagan, Steve Hamada, Sid Chammag, Larry Pawid and others.
They were all our age, but they had gone to the Great Beyond sooner. We’re sure the cool weather had nothing to do with their early sojourn. We heard they were fond of gulping bilog from morning till night. To fight the weather?
We’d visit well-known psychic healer Jun Labo at Nagoya Inn.
Baguio or La Trinidad is a panacea to the soul what with its Pine tree-shrouded lofty mountains, the nippy air, the familiar scent and the sight of aborigines in G’strings or fine-skinned Igorotas.
But that Saturday trip had a novelty. We met tough-bodied pugilists from Igorot land and North Cotabato who were to stage their boxing wares in the school gym ring. We were ushered in to the corner of PDI’s famous columnist Recah Trinidad and former Cotabato Gov. Manny Pinol, an old pal from the Bulletin. We also met with Freddie Roach and Amir Kahn. Our heart sank when Recah said Pacquiao was not coming anymore.
Recah and this columnist came up with an idea: Pangasinan must come up with a more organized grassroots boxing program in order to sire future Manny Pacquiaos under Governor Espino’s sports academy.
It will be patterned after Cotabato’s project, but if we know Spines, he won’t settle for a copycat. He’ll go for a k.o. so that the province will go down in the books as the premier province with a program of creating boxing champions.
Al Fernandez, when he was mayor of Dagupan, started one like it. We recalled evenings we’d be at the plaza to watch those raw matches among the boys of Malued, Pogo, Lasip and the other villages.
By the way, whatever happened to that great idea, Al? Is not Mayor Benjie Lim a Pacquiao fan? Was the idea kayoed too soon? Al says this province wide thing with Spines and in collaboration with the Amateur Boxing Association of the Philippines should be supported.
Let’s go for it.
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