Ramon Lainez was a master story-teller and he could talk all night long provided the topic is about his favorite subject: boxing.
Whether the conversation is on the phone or at his home in Roxas District in Quezon City over a serving of coffee and native delicacies, the seconds roll into minutes and the minutes turn into hours. Even if he often talked about a certain incident repeatedly, it always sounded as though it was his first time telling it and your first time hearing it.
But the phone calls won?t be taking place anymore. Neither would be the visits to his humble home along the river over a plateful of sweets, Batangas brew and sometimes beer, and the endless laughs over the folly of others and his as well.
Lainez, an original member of Team Pacquiao, the band of brothers credited for giving Manny Pacquiao his big break in the US, passed away Saturday afternoon at the UST Hospital from a heart attack. He would have been 70 on Aug. 3.
Lainez also helped launch the L&M Gym in partnership with Lito Mondejar in the early-1960s and it was this derelict gym in the Sampaloc-Quiapo area that spawned Pacquiao through the show Blow-by-Blow that Mondejar staged alongside Rod Nazario (who passed away in Sept. 2009).
Lainez had also traveled extensively starting in the 1960s as a part of the group that also ran and managed the affairs of the World Boxing Council during the presidency of the late Justiniano Montano and Rodrigo Salud (Lainez?s first cousin).
When Pacquiao started to fight in the US, Pacquiao also took him along together with Nazario, Mondejar and Gerry Garcia.
During the years that he wasn?t involved in the fight game, Lainez hooked up with MZet Productions of Vic Sotto but he could not resist the lure of the ring as he made his comeback in boxing in July 1999 with the launch of In This Corner, a weekly television show that he produced at the time of his death.
His remains lie in state at the Sanctuarium in Quezon City and he will be transferred to his hometown of Balayan, Batangas, this Friday for the burial on Sunday. (Nick Giongco)
