Politics and Team Pacquiao

The barangay elections last Oct. 28 showed Manny Pacquiao's effect on politics.  When I went home to Dumanjug to vote, I saw posters of smiling faces bearing “Team Celio”, “Team Elie”, and hundreds of other “Teams”.

The rivalry between Team Celio and Team Elie, both neighbors running for barangay captain, was so fierce that politics destroyed their friendship. As a result, they stopped playing mahjong together. For their pettiness, I wished Team Pacquiao would knock them out.

The Filipino boxer popularized the word “Team”. We saw “Team Pacquiao” on the shirts of Buboy Fernandez and Freddie Roach every time the boxer climbed into the ring.

Maybe the word “Team” also rubbed magic on Mayor Mike Rama. Had he changed the “Team Rama” tag given to his small group of BOPK defectors, he would have lost.

Conversely, politics showed its effect on Manny Pacquiao. It was ugly. His last knockout victory was in November 2009 when he destroyed Miguel Cotto. But after entering the political arena, he became a different fighter. Politics, it seemed, rubbed a curse on his boxing career.

In March 2010, two months before he ran for Congress, Pacquiao couldn't finish off the battered Joshua Clottey. Prior to that fight, he had destroyed David Diaz, Oscar dela Hoya, Ricky Hatton, and Miguel Cotto all in stunning, bloody fashion. 

But when he entered the halls of Congress, Pacquiao never had another knockout win.

In 2012, he lost all his fights. True, many thought he won against Timothy Bradley, but he could have stopped him, if he was in top form. That murderous punch he got from Juan Manuel Marquez, which sent him flat on the canvass, must have been straight from hell.

Maybe Pacquiao cut a deal with the devil so he'd run unopposed in 2013. Or maybe the boxing gods frowned upon his political adventures. Seriously, Pacquiao was better off without political distractions.

In his next fight against Brandon Rios, his biggest enemy is Rep. Pacquiao. Although not a pushover, Rios is in no way in the level of Pacquiao, the only fighter to win eight titles in eight different divisions. In achieving that rare feat, the Filipino icon has defeated boxing's biggest names.

In contrast, I recognized only two names in Rios' boxing profile: Mike Alvarado and Urbano Antillon. Alvarado, the only guy who beat Rios, got knocked out last month. Antillon stopped Bobby Pacquiao in Round 1 in 2008. But Bobby was never in the same league as his brother.

For the fight against Rios, the crucial stuff was not the familiar scenes we saw on TV. The act of shadowboxing before the media was only for show. Pacquiao's most important moment was away from the press, and even away from other people. It happened inside his mind.

It was when he found himself sitting on his bed torn between tying his shoes for his early morning jog and going comfortably back to sleep. It was when he began to doubt the reason he punished his body in the gym when he could have enjoyed his billions as a congressman.

If Manny Pacquiao wants to rise again, he has to choose a boxer's Spartan life over a congressman's privileged existence.

This Nov. 24, I am rooting for Pacquiao to unite Team Elie and Team Celio. I wish he'd knock their petty politics out along with Brandon Rios. I hope he'd bring smiles to our wailing countrymen struck recently by a 7.2-magnitude earthquake and Supertyphoon “Yolanda”.

By rising from the devastating knockout loss he suffered in his last fight, Manny will inspire a devastated nation to rise again.

That is, if Team Pacquiao has shunned politics away from the boxer's camp.

Bernard Inocentes S. Garcia

Dumanjug, Cebu