INSIDE SPORTS: PACQUIAO IS A CHANGED MAN
By Ronnie Nathanielsz
PhilBoxing.com
Tue, 06 May 2008
We have learned many good things through the years from our esteemed friend, the eminent lawyer Rudy Salud. And one of the lessons we have learned ? and hopefully learned well ? is not to criticize or condemn people in totality but rather to carefully weigh the good they have done and the things they have achieved and then measure them against the negatives before making a judgment call.
Ranged against this fundamental principle nobody can deny that for all his faults ? real or imagined ? Filipino ring idol Manny Pacquiao comes out way ahead and indeed deserves our recognition of him as a national treasure when we served as ring announcer for his fight against Fahsan 3K Battery some years ago.
We are more than pleased, like most if not all boxing fans, that by all accounts Manny has given up his sometimes wild and wooly ways of the past littered with late nights and long hours in pool halls, cockpits, casinos and fun places where he gambled millions that he had earned through his sacrifices in the ring.
We told Pacquiao ourselves that we were happy about his new lifestyle and thanked God for showing him the way to a good and decent family life with his charming wife Jinkee who has been a tower of strength and a woman with a remarkable capacity to understand and in so doing stand by her husband through the good times and the not-so-good times. This is particularly true when intrigues and jobless leeches who steal from Manny have conspired to destabilize their lives far more than any criticism by colleagues in media.
Ring Magazine?s Philippine correspondent Ted Lerner told us after a recent visit to Pacquiao?s hometown of General Santos City that he was amazed at the transformation he saw. Ted said Pacquiao spent a total of around six hours a day with his studies, spent lots of quality time with his family but was never tired enough not to listen to the pleas of those who came to him in their hour of want and never turned anyone away.
There are those among us who have, from time to time, shown concern over his tendency to cut down on his announced training time as he is doing right now in the build-up to his WBC lightweight title fight against champion David Diaz. Reference has been made to the fact that while Diaz is training, Manny has been scuba-diving.
But we have to take Manny at his word. He claims that salt water helps cure the nasty wound he suffered in his last fight with Juan Manuel Marquez and that the water also helps strengthen his skin which is a belief of our forefathers. Beyond that Manny believes ? and who are we to question him ? that he?s been staying in shape and seven weeks of a grueling grind at Freddie Roach?s Wild Card Gym would be enough to get the job done.
Let?s face it. The fighter knows himself better than anybody else, or at the very least, should. He hasn?t let a nation and people that have enjoyed the reflected glory of his amazing ring exploits in the past, down. And, there is perhaps no reason to believe he will do so this time.
As Manny told us in Cebu, in the face of criticism his strength is that God knows who Manny is and that he has wronged no one. This in itself is a sign of his strong faith. Maybe, it's time for all of us, to keep faith with Pacquiao for, after all, he is indeed our national treasure.
Click here to view a list of other articles written by Ronnie Nathanielsz.
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