Weekend watch
TV reality shows generally come from controlled – usually artificial – environments.
But even reality shows are not immune to, well, reality.
Like HBO’s 24/7 boxing reality series, which focuses on boxers Manny Pacquiao and Miguel Cotto training for their Nov. 14 pay-per-view HBO fight. As the series debuts Saturday (10:15 p.m. ET) viewers won’t just see speed bags being pummeled – there’s also footage of U.S. Marines riding to the rescue of typhoon victims.
Producer Scott Boggins and his crew were filming Pacquiao, who previously has prepped for fights in Hollywood, training in Baguio City in his native Philippines when the high-altitude town – inaccessible by commercial flights and an eight- to 10-hour mountainous drive from Manila– was hit by deadly Typhoon Parma this month.
Pacquiao continued his training routine, Boggins says, but after “nonstop, monsoon-like rain for several days, it started to hit us something was going on.” Like when the road to the gym was flooded out and “we saw complete neighborhoods underwater.”
Boggins says Pacquiao kept training – substituting running in a swimming pool after roadwork became impossible – “and kept his focus.”
As the weather cleared Oct. 11 and the HBO crew tried to get a flight out, they were met by U.S. Marine helicopters flying with in with food aid. Says Boggins: “We were all taken aback, a little weepy. Those Marines were great.”
– Michael Hiestand
