EVEN the respected Cable News Network, more popularly known as CNN, couldn?t get the hang out of Filipino Manny Pacquiao.
Pacquiao the congressman, and not the boxing superstar.
In its special Year in Preview segment, the so-called ?Worldwide Leader in News? had included the 32-year-old lawmaker from the province of Sarangani as part of its list of the ?20 Stories That Changed Our World in 2010.?
Under the title ?Pacquiao wins congressional seat?, CNN cited the eight-time world boxing champion?s staggering victory in the last May elections over a ?heavily favored opponent from a powerful political family by a landslide? as among the most note worthy news around the world in the last 12 months.
Pacquiao beat Roy Chongbian in the national polls in his second attempt at public office. In 2007, he also ran for a congressional seat in General Santos City, but lost to then incumbent Darlene Antonino-Custodio, a member of another prominent political clan from South Cotabato.
?The fighter of the last decade could be the politician of the next,? the CNN began on its short feature on Pacquiao.
The item then concluded that ?the beloved Filipino fighter was sworn in to the House of Representatives in June, but requested a leave of absence two months later to train for an upcoming bout with Antonio Margarito.?
The citation was the second major honor to be bestowed by a well-respected news organization to the world?s top pound-for-pound fighter.
Sports Illustrated earlier named Pacquiao as its top boxing story for the year 2010 after winning an unprecedented eight world championships in eight different weight divisions following his 12-round, one-sided decision over Mexican Antonio Margarito for the World Boxing Council (WBC) junior middleweight crown.
Branding it as ?the Year of Pacquiao?, SI columnist Bryan Graham also cited the Filipino?s successful defense of his World Boxing Organization (WBO) welterweight title against Joshua Clottey at the Cowboys Stadium, his victory in the political arena, and the failure to put together a highly-anticipated fight with unbeaten Floyd Mayweather Jr. as among the factors that made Pacquiao easily the top newsmaker in the world of prize fighting in the year about to end.
As Graham himself noted, Pacquiao has penetrated the American sporting mainstream ?like no Asian-born athlete in history.?
The piece on Pacquiao landed at no. 19 in the CNN list, which is topped by the bloody Red shirts protest in Thailand.
?From Wikileaks to potential war in Korea, to Red shirts in Thailand, these were the stories we couldn?t stop talking about,? was written in the primer of the yearend special.
Ironically, the hostage-taking of a tourist bus in Manila that killed eight Hong Kong nationals, ranked no. 9 in the list, just ahead of the formal sentencing meted on Kaing Guek Eav, the 67-year-old former teacher known as Comrade Duch, one of the first major figures from the Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia to be found guilty of war crimes.
Other than Pacquiao, others included in the list in terms of sports value were India cricket scandal (#14), Japanese Olympic silver medalist Mao Asada besting South Korean gold medalist Yu-Na Kim in the 2010 World Figure Skating Championships in Turin, Italy (#7), and the Commonwealth Games? failure in India
