PacMan-Clottey at Cowboys Stadium

Four days to go and most of the Filipino nation will again stand still to watch and cheer the PacMan and Ghana’s Joshua Clottey restructure each others facial designs. We all know that both of them are capable of knockouts, its just a matter of who lands the best shots.

Today we focus on the house that Jerry Jones built - the Cowboys Stadium. Jones owns the Dallas Cowboys of the NFL and the expensive ($1.2 billion), massive and glittery structure. It sits in an area of 180,000 square meters. Built by a Dallas-based firm, it is a mix of glass and steel punctuated with with a giant four-sided high definition JumboTron hovering 90 feet above the field. Imagine watching PacMan battling Clottey on a 160 feet x 72 feet HD video screen.

The base seating capacity is 73,000 including 325 suites and high-priced club seats with access to bar lounges with escalating levels of luxury. These suites come complete with flat screen TV’s. They don’t come cheap as they cost between $16,000 to $150,000, dependent on your viewing preferences and how much luxury you can splurge. This doesn’t include season ticket costs which can set you back from $60 to $340 per game, per person.

If you want to go cheap, terraces are constructed for standing room tickets sold at $29. The Cowboys call these tickets as “party passes” since fans are able to stand around, drink beer, cheer and do whatever they want within tolerable limits. If you get undesirable, there are security personnel with MMA background to bring you back to your senses or knock your senses out, whatever you prefer.

Jones traveled extensively with his wife on an idea-gathering mission for this project which aside from stadiums visited, included airports and shopping malls. He visited Manchester United’s Wembley Stadium in England three times and adapted the arches and glass walls.

The result is a combination of muscle and lightness - the strength coming from the main structural support of the stadium’s retractable roof, a pair of single span arches each one 1/4 of a mile in length. The lightness comes from massive 180-ft. high glass doors set between the arches at both ends of the stadium. It lets in a good amount of natural light and a clear view of the field and to the other end.

I doubt if this fight can pack in the numbers. The boxing ring in the middle of the field could look like a matchbox and the fighters looking like kuto if you’re seated in the upper galaxy of the cavernous arena. But with the JerryTron in HD, PacMan and Clottey will be bigger than life.

I go for the Pambansang Kamao on this one, as always. PacMan as boxing’s best pound-for-pound fighter? A very big YES. PacMan for congressman? You decide, you know. Wala na ko say.

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I was in Manila the past weekend and the sights and sounds of their traffic is simply intolerable cruelty. A six kilometer trip will take you more than two hours. Cebu traffic is merely a baby compared to Manila’s normally abnormal situation. I will never make yawyaw anymore whenever I get stuck in Cebu traffic.

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