The construction of www.mannypacquiao.ph, the on-line synagogue of rabid fans of the uncrowned featherweight king, was borne out of two words: ?Get out.?
?When I was searching for news about Manny last year I stumbled into [Marco Antonio] Barrera?s website,? recalled Dong Secuya, the Cebu-based brains behind the site. ?There was this one poster that caught my attention and that basically described Pinoys as vagabonds, who populate other boxing websites because they didn?t have their own [website].
?That stung me a little bit.?
The provocation couldn?t have landed in better hands — or fingers.
In three days Secuya, a boxing enthusiast since the ?80s and one of the pioneer web designers in the country, responded with the most prolific website of any Filipino athlete, dead or alive.
The site is actually foremost a news silo, where one click can lead readers to Pacquiao-related reports from in and around the Pacific rim.
Secuya explained: ?What I do is go regularly to the two major news gatherers on the Net and check if there are latest news stories. If there is one, I immediately post it on the site.
?The posting is handled by a program where all you have to do is copy and paste the news story.?
And voila, a virtual library on which all Pacquiao devotees can salivate. This isn?t to mention the other entertaining facets of the site, which include a fan forum that features borderline militant but always insightful discussions by fans on a variety of Pacquiao topics; video clips of Pacquiao?s world-title fights; on-line polls; and a news archive which allows readers to scan past reports dating as far back as last year.
But given that the site?s upsides are A-grade quality — a multiawarded web developer like Secuya will go for no less — the downside could prove costly in a very literal sense.
?If you include manpower, hosting and bandwidth, the cost could go from $300 to $400 a month just to maintain this site,? estimated Secuya. ?The bandwidth cost would even go bigger in the coming days because thousands of people are coming in and people are downloading some of Manny?s fight video clips from the server as well.?
The cost is a concern but not so much a roadblock to Secuya?s vision.
?Can we sustain the effort financially and in terms of manpower? I think that concern will be addressed as we go along.
?[But I pushed through with this project because] the historical implications of the Pacquiao-Barrera fight was something I didn?t want [Filipinos] to miss, [especially since] some experts thought it was the most important boxing match in Filipino boxing history.?
Designing websites, doing codes and maintaining servers are what?s keeping Secuya financially secure. But in a world where cyberspace and the boxing arena rarely capture one individual?s interest, Secuya is a rare cross-breed fan of machine and mayhem. And proudly educated in both.
Although a Californian has registered the domain www.mannypacquiao.com in 2002, nothing has come out of it, so there isn?t really any commercial competition.
Although some readers may surmise that the ?cut-and-paste? technique employed by Secuya to gather copyrighted news is illegal, it really isn?t. What Secuya includes is not the whole story ?but the headline?just a few lines [from the story] where we put a link to the site of the source.
?It is actually beneficial to the original source of the news because people will be redirected to go to their site through ours,? he added.
So with no websites to compete against and no apparent legal danger in the midst, Secuya expects www.mannypacquiao.ph to be online, even moreso as long as Pacquiao remains in-ring.
?Maybe our website will even extend beyond [Manny?s retirement], depending on the legacy that Manny will leave behind,? opined Secuya, who admitted that he hasn?t come across Pacquiao face-to-face.
?His win over Barrera has established him as a certified pound-for-pound fighter. A loss at this point in his career wouldn?t hurt him too much and definitely would not end his career nor mannypacquiao.ph.?
On Pacquiao?s May 8 fight against Juan Manuel Marquez, Secuya offered a bold prediction. ?I think he can easily take out Marquez because of Manny?s superior speed and power.?
?In the unlikely event that he loses, [it?s] not because he was outclassed but because he got careless. And it will not greatly affect his boxing career. After a couple of wins down the road, he will be back on top again.?
And when that happens, expect mannypacquiao.ph to be there where the action is.
