MANILA — On this Sunday morning at the Guadalupe wet market in Makati City, it would seem the public could not care less about boxing champion Manny Pacquiao?s fight with Mexican Juan Manuel Marquez, as they went about their business, hawking or buying fish and meats.
Unless one looked — or listened — closely.
Almost everyone was all ears as the radio, at maximum volume, blared out blow-by-blow updates on the match.
A small crowd of vendors and market-goers gathered around a rice selling booth, raptly listening to the live annotation by radio announcers of the match.
They burst into claps and cheers every time Pacquiao was said to have landed a good one on his Mexican foe. “Go, go, go, Pacquiao, knock him out,” a fish vendor shouted at one point.
But the reaction was a bit more subdued when it was announced that Pacquiao had won via split decision, especially among those who wanted an unambiguous knockout.
“If there was no knockdown, he would have lost,” Dennis, a meat seller, commented.
Some even sympathized with the Mexican. “Kawawa naman si Marquez,” said Teresa Espino, a housewife on a grocery run, who stopped to listen as the fight ended.
Moments after the match, the air was abuzz with conversations about the win, spoiling the result of the fight for others. (The free TV telecast was still hours away.)
Elsewhere, the mood was less than enthusiastic.
At an appliance store overlooking Edsa, all TV monitors were tuned in to a local station where the Holy Mass was being aired instead of the delayed telecast of the undercard boxing matches.
The message, it seemed, was no, you can’t watch it here. Posted on the store entrance was a cardboard with the words: “Bawal umistambay dito.” [Loitering not allowed here.]
