Do you remember the old childhood playground chant?
“Sticks and stones will break my bones but names will never hurt me.”
I can assure you all, Pacfans, Pachaters and don?t give flying fish about Manny Pacquiao people alike, that all the empty threats, stupid insults and talk on Philboxing.com and Pacland about ?banning? Boxingconfidential…all this raw sewage DOES NOT bother me at all.
It comes with the territory when you own and operate a website as opinionated as Boxingconfidential.com is.
I?m a long way from the Philippines right now, enjoying Indian Summer?s golden glow on Cape Cod and my guess is you?d have venture to Boston or to Providence to find some great Pinoy people so I am not worried about the sticks either.
But, and I know all of you will feel my pain; it?s the stones that are killing me.
I guess it?s another sign of aging for the White Gorilla but, while controversy rages on around Ricardo Lois? prediction that Pacman will get hammered into bloody submission by Oscar de la Hoya, I was laying on a hospital emergency room bed Friday afternoon.
You see, I?ve just gone from The Rolling Stones to the Kidney Stones.
You know you’re older than dirt when you have both a proctologist and a urologist on speed dial.
As I writhed in pain from the golf ball sized blockage which emanated from one of my two kidneys (the one I refer to as Sidney), thoughts of Ronnie Nathanielsz, of Recah Trinidad and even of BC?s own resident Pinoy pugilistic pundit, Hermie Rivera, were far from my mind.
Little did I know I thousands of hate-filled emails awaiting me, including one whose message line read simply? ?JIHAD.?
I was born and I will die as a Roaming Catholic so I am not interested in any religious wars. Turns out it was just another vicious missive from a CPN, Certified Pacquiao Nuthugger.
That was before I tossed down a couple of Percocet?s. I?ll tell you one thing; neither Megamanny nor Oscar will go on Dec. 6 to the far off dreamland that those knockout pills put me on.
Getting back to The Stones, the Rolling ones not the Kidney ones, I was singing, ?Hey, you get off my cloud.?
I mean, my only diversion would be to watch a DVD of my new favorite Broadway play, “Urinetown.”
But even in my deepest narcosleep, while having pleasant thoughts about the cute as a button Irish nurse who attended to me, one idea keep coming back to me. Ah, visions of Joanne.
The Marley Haters, The Lois Haters, The John Chavez Haters, the Boxingconfidential haters who want out site banned from the two excellent Filipino fight sites?.if they knew I was down and almost out, taking a medical eight count as it were?they would have only wish for me.
?Marley is sick? Marley is trying to pass a kidney stone? It?s nothing trivial, I hope.?
It?s OK now; the pain has subsided a bit so you extreme White Gorilla haters can admit it. Hell, you?re probably bragging about it, how you used your voodoo dolls and stuck pins in them, how you induced such a trial and tribulation for me.
Btw, banning Boxingconfidential is not the answer. It sounds reminiscent of A. Hitler burning books. You cannot suppress the truth and the truth is all that Lois did was pick Oscar to knock Manny out.
Yes, Lois put some sizzle, some hot sauce, on the steak but all he rendered was a fight prediction on the scintillating Boxingconfidential.com radio show.
You don?t like Lois? You want to chastise him, correct him, and insult him? The phone lines will be open this Monday as they are each and every Monday.
But I warn you all. I am on the mend. I will probably walk 18 holes today at the Falmouth Country Club and shoot a sizzling 49?on the front nine.
I am a medical macho man. The hospital ER that can hold me has not been built yet. I?ve tossed my goofball pills aside.
I will fight the haters on the beaches, on the streets and in the suites. I will attack the haters by land, sea and air.
Come Monday, I will write about a disgraceful Pacquiao mismatch which makes the fight with Oscar look like an even-money bout.
This just in to our newsroom: youngster Lois once passed a stone. He says it felt like 100 razor blades going out of his family jewel if you know what I mean. Lois is forecasting continued and brutal pain for me.
But the battle and the war against the haters is not over. I?m just taking a knee here.
Any minute now I could be hugging my own you know whats.
I?m waving the white flag and asking you all for a temporary truce. Take some pity on me and remember that I fully embrace the Manny-Oscar fight and that I think Megamanny can and will win although I reserve the right to change the prediction if I must.
Where?s Hermie Rivera, another BC soldier MIA? I guess vodka really is a helluva drug. I must send Chavez down to some of those nice bars in San Francisco?s Tenderloin to roust our loyal liege, to summon him to battle.
It?s not the pokes in my newly-renovated eyes with the sharp sticks of the Pacnuts that is damaging me.
It?s not the misinformed remarks made by seasoned journos Trinidad and Nathanielsz that are discombobulating me.
I am wounded by those who call me a mere ?blogger,? me having been a sportswriter for such fine newspapers as The New York Post and The Las Vegas Sun. And me having been the greatest American boxing writer of all times in my callow youth. Really, folks, there was a household survey done on that. It was done in my own household.)
(OK, OK, now I?m in the twilight of a mediocre career but don?t tell everyone.)
None of these things have given me great anguish or pain.
It?s those stones.
But, as my doctor said, this too shall pass.
I can?t wait.
