EDITORIAL - Big disappointment

Cebuanos who went to see a boxing card last Saturday went home greatly disappointed. They had come to see real fights, especially in the main event featuring Gerry Peñalosa, the local boy whom they had not seen in about five years.

But while Peñalosa went through the motions of trying to put up a fight (you never know unless a real fight occurred, right?) it was just the misfortune of Cebuanos that his opponent happened to be not a real boxer but an illegal immigrant. You know, one who keeps running away.

The question now begs to be asked — was the choice of an illegal immigrant deliberate? The question is asked because we now remember that, prior to the fight, the media had loudly proclaimed the fight as just a tune-up for Peñalosa, to prepare him for a coming bigger fight.

Now, why would a boxer who has already firmed up a bigger and more important fight risk everything by sneaking in an insignificant bout? If Peñalosa wanted a tune-up, he could just have gone on sparring, unless of course he was guaranteed to emerge unscathed.

And that is precisely what happened. Peñalosa emerged unscathed because the illegal immigrant kept running away. But while Peñalosa profitted from the fight (he earned some money in the process, right?), the poor Cebuanos were left holding an empty bag.

Of course the other bouts, judging by the results, may have seemed pretty exciting, considering that almost all ended in knockouts. On the other hand, doesn’t it stretch credulity too far to have almost all bouts end in knockouts? Just asking.

We ask because we know for a fact that the boxing industry is not a training class for heavenly angels. The vocabularies of both the English and Cebuano languages are teeming with terminologies that are far from flattering to the profession.

The word patsy, for instance, has become a red flag that dwells more comfortably in boxing than in any other endeavor for which it can be applied. Some of those sent to sleep last Saturday indeed fit Manny Pacquiao’s classic description of a “tricycle driver.”

Patsies are reverse mercenaries. They are paid not to kill but be killed. Their value lies not in the fight they never put up, but in the statistics their preordained defeats will generate. They are valuable for boosting records, no matter how unvalidated by substance.