Southpaws from the south

There will be no traffic tomorrow, Sunday. Most malls (at least those with no satellite feeds from Texas) will have few shoppers, and there will be no crime …at least for the few hours that Manny Pacquiao will battle with his taller, controversial opponent, Mexican Antonio Margarito.

And, of course, there will be few of Pacman’s colleagues in Congress here at home to take care of business. I never knew that watching boxing matches was “in aid of legislation,” but that only proves that there is so much of our own beloved Philippines that I do not understand.

What I do know is that southpaws (lefties) do well in boxing, as well as in many other competitive sports or at least those sports where you have a normally right-handed opponent. You never know what’s coming or where it’s coming from. I wonder if that is also the origin of the saying “Ît came from left field.”

The Big Dome in the early 1960s was among the world’s biggest venues.

Left or right, win or lose, it won’t matter to Manny Pacquiao. He’ll be bringing home the bacon…a lot of it. It’s better than betting on Lotto. In fact his purse will be larger than the 6/55 draw, which reminds me of what someone said of boxing — that it was a gay sport (sorry to be politically incorrect), because where else would you find two men obsessed with rings, perpetually watching their weight, always working out, wearing satin shorts, and vying for a purse?

Of course, I would never crack that joke in front of the Pacman or any other professional boxer like him. All of our boxing greats were manly men who dressed rugged, were predisposed to drinking San Miguel beer and ordering plates of “highland legumes.”

I’m writing this article from Cebu, home of another southpaw, Gabriel “Da Flash” Elorde. He’s from Bogo in northern Cebu, while I’m from Argao in southern Cebu; and Rep. Manny is from further south of course. ( I just wanted to mention my name in the same sentence as those two sports greats….not that I have much in the way of boxing skills; my fighting style is more girly-man in comparison to their manly-man school of Pinoy pugilism).

Da Flash sent chills down his opponents’ backs.

The year 2010 is, in fact, the 50th anniversary of Elorde’s historic win over Harold Gomes for the Junior Flyweight Championship of the world. That momentous sporting event happened on our own soil and at the world’s largest dome (at the time), the Araneta Coliseum. That victory set the tone for the whole country, which was then still riding the crest of an economy second only to Japan (the peso was 2:1 to the US dollar).

The Big Dome was packed with over 30,000 sweating pinoys. The place did not have air-conditioning in its first few years and the bleacher seats were concrete terraces where you could pack a few extra thousand people jeepney style. I remember watching several editions of “Holiday on Ice” sitting on those cold terraces.

Elorde won in seven rounds after pummeling and flooring the champion several times. The victory was the first world championship for the Philippines since it gained independence. Elorde defended his Junior Featherweight crown for over seven years (a record that still stands). He did try and move up in weight but was stopped by Carlos Ortiz, the reigning champion in that division. He finally lost to Japanese boxer Yoshiaki Numata in 1967 although he had a close call in 1966 against an Argentinian named Laguna. The venue was also the Big Dome.

The poster for the epic 1960 showdown is now a collector’s item.

Manny Pacquiao will defend his title at another big dome, the Dallas Cowboys dome, which has seating capacity three times that of the Araneta’s (although only half will be cordoned off for this fight — that’s still about 60,000 seats. The dome is actually in the City of Arlington and not Dallas. It is only five years old but is already a choice venue for global sporting spectacles like the Pacquiao-Margarito fight. The Pacquiao-Mayweather fightapalooza is sure to be next.

I’d rather that Pacquiao have all his fights here at the Big Dome. I’d also like him to pass a bill forcing the Philippine government to push for the training of two dozen more southpaw boxers like him so that there would be a boxing match every month. We would wipe out crime completely. Our lawmakers and government officials need not have to spend our hard-earned money to fly to the US, check into expensive hotels and eat steak dinners “in aid of legislation”…I mean digestion. The malls would complain though but the Araneta Center wouldn’t mind, Maybe they could franchise the Big Dome and build one in Cebu, Davao, Gen San, and even California — just like Jolibee.

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Feedback is welcome. Please e-mail the writer at paulo.alcazaren@gmail.com..