Lately, friends and foes alike were one in heaping praises for me. They said I almost look like now a world-famous sports celebrity. Credit to my goggles and disheveled hair as if it’s truly “mahangin sa labas.” And also to my pure white beard a poet likened to a splendor in the grass.
People around me mistook me as the great Freddie Roach, Pacquiao’s famous trainer. And I would cherish every moment when such flattery takes me everywhere.
This is my secret, folks, please “atin-atin lang, ‘to,” kindly tell no one, that among sports, boxing was my first love. But it was my first hatred too when I was walloped by my much smaller foe the first time I ever donned the gloves.
Sometimes it makes me wonder if it is un-Christian-like to love and enjoy that bloody sport as you live. Violent as it is, I still considered boxing as biblical since all boxers believe it is better to give than to receive.
Like in an ordinary world of ordinary people in this planet that’s no longer green, pugilists likewise are in a love-hate relationship most often. As you’ve observed, right after pummeling his opponent with a flurry of deadly punches, he’d hug him passionately like a long lost friend.
On the debit side though, boxing is universally known as the red light district of sports. And I considered it also as the green light to the graveyard due to its evil of all sorts.
How many exploited boxers have had their last breath inside the ring since the first official fight did they stage? And how many dreams turned to nightmare in pursuit of pot of gold molded by ambition, impatience and rage?
Well, life is a sport itself, what matters most is in that age-old cliché. That it’s not in winning or losing but in how you play the game fairly.
And boxing is like marriage, sometimes it’s flashy. At times it is slow and easy. But oftentimes rocky.
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