Manny Pacquiao has taken a break from his busy schedule to promote a grassroots boxing program that aims to discover young boxers for future international competitions.
If you know Pacquiao, this is a surprise. In the past, this Filipino sports treasure showed a preference for basketball over boxing, showbiz over boxing, religion over boxing, politics over boxing, and nearly everything else over boxing.
And in all these forays, Pacquiao had a tendency to fall flat on his face.
Take the time he played in the PBA for Kia, where he was also given the title of head coach. He ended up mainly ridiculed there for his twin jobs.
He strayed into showbiz, appearing on TV where he gave away prizes and moneys, but that too went pfft. He was just into so many things?businesses, physical training, properties, endorsements, charities, social calendar?that no one ever knew when, or if, he could make it to his own weekly show.
He went into religion, steeping himself in the Bible, which he then brought into politics with zeal, ending up on official government record reducing same-sex relationships to mortal sin?all of which ended up spawning memes of him on social media, none of them flattering.
Actually, he was lucky because many veteran senators treated him with kid gloves, clearly holding their punches so that they didn?t embarrass the freshman senator that the country respected as a heavy hitter on the boxing ring but deemed a lightweight on the senate floor.
At last, finally, he seems to have realized that the one area where it can be win-win for him is right where he began: in boxing. Now he is putting his name and prestige and clout in a nationwide sports program that connects him directly to his legacy.
Pacquiao is teaming up with the (PSC) Philippine Sports Commission and the ABAP (Association of Boxing Alliances in the Philippines) to start the program whose goal is to get a Filipino boxer to win a gold medal in the Paris Olympics of 2024 and in the Los Angeles Olympics of 2028.
The program will kick off as early as this week in General Santos City, Pacquiao?s home base, where boys and girls, aged 15-18, will compete in seven weight divisions. The program then moves in the coming weeks to Luzon and the Visayas.
There is actually nothing new in this program that has not already been tried by the PSC or the ABAP. The PSC had Batang Pinoy and the National Games; the ABAP had Go-For-Gold. None of these previous programs, however, succeeded in meeting their objective. To this day the country still has no boxer on the horizon talented enough to go for that Olympic gold.
One reason could be that both the PSC and the ABAP also had?they still do?too many things on their plate. Put that in a landscape where grassroots programs are not part of the sports culture, and what do you expect?
Most sports officials prefer to win medals, even if they?re from cheaper competition sites like the Southeast Asian Games, as long as they?re medals. Calculating that medals have more impact on the public, they choose to go this route instead of planning for the long term, which is what?s tried and tested in countries where government and private alliance creates a wide base from which to choose and train future stars.
But now, with Pacquiao in a joint venture with the PSC and the ABAP, things could be looking up. Pacquiao?s name alone, plus the reach of the PSC and the ABAP, could be giving a Filipino boxer that medal?why not the gold??from Paris and Los Angeles in seven or eleven years.
Hopefully, this one endeavor of Pacquiao, at a time when he?s past his prime as a boxer, will yield results far more satisfying than all those forays outside boxing ever gave the champ.
