For half a century, the L&M Gym in Sampaloc, Manila, was home to many of the Philippines’ most beloved boxers.
Beginning in the 1960s, it served as an assembly line for fighters who wound up either world champions, world title challengers as well as a bunch of journeymen, trial horses, no-hopers and has-beens.
It was likewise home to the country’s greatest ever athlete, eight-division world champion Manny Pacquiao, who trained there before wandering into Freddie Roach’s Wild Card Boxing Club in Hollywood in 2001.
Still, even when Pacquiao spent more time sweating it out in the United States, the sweat shop on Paquita, a narrow street lined with rows and rows of boarding houses and dilapidated low-rent apartment units, he made it a point to go there.
Pacquiao, who recently retired after 25 years, hung out with the original Team Pacquiao, a small group of men, who ate, slept and lived boxing.
The L and M stood for (Ramon) Lainez and (Lito) Mondejar. Eventually, ringsiders later called it LNM for Lainez, (Rod) Nazario and Mondejar with Nazario as the other pillar of the solid troika.
Before Pacquiao set up camp overseas, the gym was where the likes of Pedro Adigue, Erbito Salavarria, Rolando Navarrete, Morris East, Rolando Pascua, Luisito Espinosa and Gerry Penalosa got ready for their biggest bouts.
But when Pacquiao signed up with American promotional and management teams in the mid-2000s, the L&M Gym began to crumble.
Suddenly, the old trainers and boxers who used to go there daily to train and spend their after-training hours exchanging jokes and anecdotes, felt the gym was about to close shop.
About ten years ago, Pacquiao bought the property and leveled it to the ground in place of a multi-level building that served as a boarding house and office space.
For a lucky few, the renamed MP Tower, was home to some of them.
But Pacquiao’s ownership of it didn’t last long as he eventually sold it, leaving the sprinkling of old L&M Gym regulars looking for places to relocate.
Nowadays, traces of the L&M Gym’s glorious past can no longer be felt and seen, save for the building that played a pivotal part in Pacquiao’s classic rags-to-riches story.
None of the former boxing men who smoked and drank cheap beer and brandy and the fighters who provided fun and excitement are around to talk about its heyday.
But the lady who operates the soft drink and beer distribution business still occupies the tiny space adjacent to the once-fabled gym is still there going about her usual business.
“No one’s left. Nobody’s around to talk about it. Many of them are no longer around while some have decided to live elsewhere or go back to their provinces,” she said as she scribbled numerals on a sheet of paper.
Indeed, a quick look at the surroundings justify the woman’s claims.
The unmistakable smell of liniment permeating in the air is no longer there.
Even the continuous sound of punches hitting the bag and the speed ball is nowhere to be heard, something one could sense about 50 meters away when it was still the place-to-be.
In place of the chants and shouts from trainers giving instructions have been replaced by the high-pitch voices of kids playing and women engaging in small talk, all of them probably oblivious to the fact that, once upon a time, the place was a beehive of activity.
The L&M is gone forever but it would be fitting for a marker to be placed there as a reminder of its storied past.
