WE LOST and that’s it, we lost.
I mean we all lost, the entire nation lost, and that’s why the nation is in a state of mourning. If the flag be put at half-mast all week, I would have no objection.
I say this because, just days before the fight, Rudy Salud, the former Philippine Basketball Association commissioner, said: “If Manny Pacquiao would lose to Erik Morales — God forbid that wouldn’t happen — it would be a day of mourning for all of us.”
Sadly, it happened.
And if we now have black ribbons on our left chest, if not black armbands, so be it.
Until his defeat to Morales on Sunday, almost everybody felt Pacquiao looked invincible. Only maybe 1 out of 50 Filipinos on the average had bet on a Morales victory.
When Pacquiao lost, its immediate impact on almost every Filipino was of deathly grief, as though a member of the family had suddenly died.
It seemed like we were seeing the Ninoy Aquino assassination all over again. Tragic.
It seemed like Viernes Santo had been advanced five days, the debacle happening on a Palm Sunday under overcast skies.
It seemed like the world had stopped, the clock not a-ticking anymore.
Nobody’s to blame for this. Not Pacquiao.
Pacquiao had given it his best shot. Simply put, his best was not enough.
Morales had given it his best shot. Simply put, his best was more than enough.
While we praise the gallantry of Pacquiao — he fought with only one good eye from middle of the fifth up to the final bell of the 12th round — we must also raise a glass to the ring savvy of Morales.
If it’s any consolation, while Morales, 28, was the better fighter on Sunday over his foe two years his junior, Pacquiao emerged the courageous fighter between the two.
Boxers of a lesser stuff would have quit, if not coasted along, had they been put on the shoes of Pacquiao: In the last seven rounds of the 12-round bout, Pac Man was fighting burdened by a huge handicap. That gaping wound on his right eyebrow — whether caused by an accidental head butt or a right cross in the fifth round — had practically rendered Pacquiao blind on one eye.
After inflicting that injury, Morales had tattooed that wound relentlessly if only to pound Pacquiao into submission.
Other boxers would have collapsed from the sheer loss of blood virtually oozing from that one-inch cut like a faucet gone haywire.
But not Pacquiao.
Endowed with a deathless spirit and an unstoppable, unbreakable heart, Pacquiao plodded on, fought on like a warrior in the mold of Custer of the West: No surrender. OK, “No Fear” if you will.
Pacquiao’s bravery did not go unnoticed.
In defeat, Pacquiao stood 10 feet tall not only to his 80 million countrymen but also to billions more around the world watching the fight on TV.
He was beaten all right, but the setback was not as humiliating as say, the first round knockout suffered by Sonny Liston at the hands of Cassius Clay (Muhammad Ali) the second time they met in the Sixties.
For, while it’s true that Pacquiao had lost by a unanimous decision, the identical scores of 115-113 by the three judges would tend to show that Morales won 7 rounds against Pacquiao’s 5. It was that close. (I had that same score.)
Had the head butt-caused cut in the fifth been ruled intentional by referee Joe Cortes, who knows the corresponding penalty against Morales might have changed the complexion of the fight.
And how about if Pacquiao had not suffered that ugly wound?
You fight with only one good eye, why that’s like driving your car in the driving rain with the left wiper out of order and your car is a left-hand drive.
And how about if it were Morales who absorbed the eye injury instead — things might have turned out differently and maybe favored Pacquiao?
This is not an attempt to justify Pacquiao’s defeat. As I said, we lost. I believe that wholeheartedly.
No, not that Pacquiao lacked his usual power in this fight. He might have been way off with his rhythm at times. But you saw him connect, especially in the 12th, where he tagged Morales a number of times with crisp blows while he went at it one last time with all his guns ablaze.
It was just that, the one big punch that he was known for never came. This was just not his day, fellas.
It was, also, that Morales proved too slippery, classy if you will, to be caught flush on the chin by the famed Pacquiao brick-laden punch.
Bottom line is, “El Terible” had done his homework well against the “Pac Man.” Meaning, Morales had fought his fight — and he did it well up to the very end. The 12th round barroom brawl was Morales’ way of saying, after he had secured the win, “It’s show time, folks.”
Morales delivered his script so flawlessly that he moved and glided unceasingly early in every round, and then made his move toward the latter part of it with his own burst of shots that, at times, jarred Pacquiao.
That was the strategy I had feared most; that’s why I kept repeating here before the fight that, if Pacquiao failed to knock Morales out in five rounds, Morales would win on points after 12 rounds.
Peter Lee of Hong Kong Tea House, Jun Velasco and Gerry Garcia of Sunday PUNCH and Ariel de Jesus of Toyota MP remembered that only too well.
Still, while we are in mourning, it is well to remember again the saying, “It’s not in the rising but in the falling.”
I still believe that from the ruins of his defeat, Pacquiao, only 26 years old, will rise like the phoenix.
Very soon, that is.
