Where were their “angels”?

Manila will welcome Manny Pacquiao today and I am sure the crowds that will gather to cheer him will be just as warm and enthusiastic as they had been when he came home victorious. After all, they know how much Manny had wanted to win for their sake, and for his country. But fate has intervened and maybe it was time for him to realize that he cannot have it all the time. Anyway, he appears resigned to what happened, and we should take his lead this time.

***

Still, like so many others of our countrymen, especially our fellow Negrenses, we had been aghast at earlier reports that he had allowed himself to be “converted” by a group of people who apparently do not even belong to an organized church, so that he had blindly fallen for their blandishments about just reading the Bible and following their practices. I heard, too, that this time was also very profitable for them, as Manny had been very generous to their cult, and spending for their travels abroad, including this recent one to Las Vegas.

***

Mommy Dionisia, his down-to-earth mother, saw through them, but, for once, he seemed to have gone against her wishes. What had those people been telling him? If it is true, as his mother had lamented, that what they were doing was to keep him awake at night with all those “studies”, and “praying” kuno, then that must have been a technique for breaking him down mentally and emotionally. Isn’t that what the henchmen of dictators did during World War II, to break the spirit of those who would not agree with or join them?

***

Was Pacquiao a victim not unlike those who were duped by such groups as the Aman Futures and those others who had impoverished many people in Mindanao and other parts of the country? What stories did they spin to make him fall into their laps so willingly? In Bacolod, we hear about a group that had deprived a lot of gullible ones of their money by promises of bigger largesse from “The Almighty”. I heard that, after helping Pacquiao at the ring, and he had been taken to the hospital, his friend and trainer, Buboy Fernandez, who was walking out with my cousin, Tutay Corral, passed by this group and shouted at them: “Saan na yung mga angels na sabi ninyo tutulong kay Manny (Where now are the angels you said would help Manny)?”

***

My heart really aches for Buboy. Of all the people around Pacquiao, aside from his immediate family, I am sure he is the one who is most concerned for him. I have seen them together many times and they really treat each other like brothers. After all, they had been together, literally through thick and thin, during Manny’s career. Although Buboy is the one who started calling Mayor Bing their “lucky charm”, he is the person who looks out for the champion, and even covers up for him.

***

By the way, members of our family have been receiving inquiries, some through text, why Bing was not there with Pacquiao in the ring this time. Well, Bing did fly out there because his kumpare and adopted son had asked him, but I heard from some friends who were also there, that the management of the hotel or the Las Vegas Sports Commission, or whatever, insisted that it should be the soldiers (or Marines) who should carry the flags into the ring with the boxers.

***

And it was also true that Manny did not attend the pre-fight mass, as he used to do before where he and Jinkee were the ones who made the offerings. My friend, Father Be-of, who travels from Washington to Las Vegas just to say the mass each time, was very unhappy because Pacquiao had assured him that he would be at the mass, but didn’t show up. And the night before the fight, they say, he was kept up by the same people supposedly having “Bible” studies and praying to whoever their object was. One could suspect that Pacquiao had been brainwashed.

***

Well, that is, to use a cliché, all water under the bridge now. Will there be a Pacquiao-Marquez V? I doubt if Marquez will agree – he won’t want to risk his new accomplishment which he might never gain again. As for Manny, he sounds as if he is still raring to go. So I hope it was not prophetic when, as Buboy said he answered Manny as soon as he opened his eyes there on the canvass at the MGM Grand, and asked what happened: “Tapos na ang boksing”.*

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