Welcome 2016!

My New Year’s wishes to everyone:

May your horizons broaden like China’s territorial expansion.  May your blessings be congested like Mandaue traffic. May you always wade in happiness like in the floodwaters at Colon. May you be slapped with good fortune like Duterte.  May all your troubles be disqualified like Poe.  May illness never catch up with you like Mar’s campaign.  May your days never be dark like Binay. May you be sensitive to issues unlike PNoy. May everyday be bright like the flame from the LPG canisters of Tomas and be full of drama like Rama.  May you drown abundance like the PDAF and lastly, may bad luck be snatched from you like the crown from Miss Colombia.

On a serious note, 2016 being an election year, may the Sto. Niño and Mama Mary enlighten and guide us with the right choices in selecting our leaders.  May the choices that we will be making on May 9 lead us and our nation to a better and improved standard of living.

***

We will be welcoming 2016 with another farce of a fight come April 9.  Boxer turned singer, actor, preacher, basketball player-coach, congressman and soon-to-be senator you-know-who will, for the third time be fighting Timothy Bradley.

As if we were not taken for a ride last May with that expensively hyped sparring session with a back-pedalling Floyd Mayweather, Jr., we are again presented with this greedy anomaly.   Again I say that Manny Pacquiao has nothing more to prove to the boxing world.  He has accomplished on the square ring no other boxing icon had ever done – win championships in eight weight divisions.

I can understand Bradley’s side.  He will be fighting a boxer on a downward spiral and the third chance to defeat a legend is too good to pass up.  He will be in for a financial windfall, probably the biggest in his career.  Winning this one will also glorify his fighting resume.

PacMan is a boxing god and his greatness will forever be etched in stone.  He is incomparable in his craft and he is very, very good at it.  He is an elite fighter, never been known and seen to stay away from furious exchanges.  He has amassed obscene amounts of money enough to reclaim the whole of the Spratlys and rile the Chinese some more.  The only drawback is that he had advisers with hidden agendas that resulted in ridiculously mismatched endeavors.  Let the real coaches and players do basketball and leave the politicking to the snakes and crocodiles in suits and barong. 

I don’t favor this fight not because it will be deathly boring but because there always will be the possibility of injury to Manny.  Hopefully, what his family and perhaps all of his fans are afraid of will not happen in April.  Let Bob Arum find another vehicle for his own financial gain and let PacMan rest.  Let him be a senator if he so wishes.  We already have actors, comedians and coup plotters in the senate, a boxer won’t hurt joining the senatorial circus.   I am a fan of Manny Pacquiao, the boxer, nothing else, nothing more.

If it is any consolation for fight fans, we now have an alternative.  Mixed martial arts is gaining popularity and it would be exciting to watch Ronda Rousey avenge her first career loss in a second round knockout from Holly Holm during UFC 193. 

The fight on UFC 200 is tentatively scheduled in July 9.  Tentative because Rousey is on a mandatory six-month medical suspension as a precaution to the lights-out head kick she got from Holm.  This fight will be her shot at redemption but this will also be Holm’s shot at women’s MMA supremacy.

***

With Cebu getting to be the triathlon capital of the country, it would be nice if LGUs will be coordinating so as not to have events held close to each other.  Athletes will then have ample time to recover and prepare for another race.  One important thing to consider during these events is how to address the flow of vehicular traffic.

I had some irate reactions when Liloan hosted an event last December 20.  Being a Sunday and noting that food stalls along the highway across the munisipyo had become popular on weekends, there was quite a build-up of vehicles.  The newly opened Gaisano Grand Mall made things even more crowded.  Some words are better left confined to my ears as they’re not fit for printing.  Naturally, all the blame and anger fell on the LGU’s lap.  It’s all dirty water under the Butuanon Bridge and there’s no point in dwelling on the matter again.  Obviously, there were lapses on traffic management that the LGU will have to learn from it the next time an event will be hosted by Liloan.

Personally, I would recommend for Liloan to have an off-road duathlon.   Since the shoreline runs parallel with the national highway, athletes will have to use them for the bike and run segment, after the swim leg.  Liloan, being part of Metro Cebu, is full of vehicular traffic going to  and from the city.  Closing part of the highway restricts vehicle flow.  It’s already a four-lane highway from Mandaue to Liloan but insensitive individuals with brains located at the soles of their feet use the road to their own personal convenience.

Doing an off-road duathlon eliminates the swim leg and let athletes run and bike around the beautifully rugged hills of Liloan, which in my own assessment, needs to be promoted for sports tourism because of its raw beauty.  This eliminates the traffic problem and motorists will be singing praises to organizers.  As bonus excitements in off-rod duathlons, obstacles includes dogs running after you and harassments from cows, goats and other livestock bothered by running humans on their feeding stupor.   There will also be the occasional habal-habal driver trying to challenge a bike rider along the route.  Here’s hoping Liloan will consider this suggestion and let the LGUs from the northern and southern tip of the province who have sparse vehicle traffic host triathlons.