HE was sent by his paper to California to report on the exclusive rituals inside Manny Pacquiao’s training camp at the Wild Card Boxing Club in Hollywood.
Sorry, when Nick Giongco, a Pacquiao confidante who has been covering the world boxing celebrity for years, sent his first story, there was hardly anything new in what he had to report.
The story was flat if not entirely empty.
This led Giongco’s immediate boss, Bulletin sports ed Ding Marcelo, to believe reports that his man had been turned away from the Wild Card gym on instructions of trainer Freddie Roach.
Giongco, in fact, failed to field a Pacquiao story the other day, Marcelo rued.
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In his first story datelined Los Angeles, Giongco said Pacquiao was up before the sun in his first roadwork for his Sept. 10 duel with Mexican Hector Velasquez. At the end of that roadwork, Pacquiao’s running apparel was dripping wet, the same report added.
If a reporter bothered to travel thousands of miles just to come up with such tedious details, his boss has all the reason to be bothered or displeased.
The colorless report concluded with a final sentence detailing how Pacquiao “was roundly applauded the moment he entered the gym.”
That, folks, was the closest the reporter had peeped into what’s loomed as the biggest secret trainer Roach is supposedly cooking up with Pacquiao.
Just how exclusive is the plot they are trying to perfect?
Are they planning to make Pacquiao grow something equivalent to a third arm, to make his next fight, following back-to-back failures against Mexicans, extra special?
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Or do they have the infamous ex-Comelec Commissioner Virgilio Garcillano giving them tips on how to win on points, in case the next fight goes the distance?
The extremely exclusive developments could only lead us to speculate on what’s up with the New Manny Pacquiao his American trainer appears to be preparing for the Staples Center card of Sept 10.
Anyway, for the record, Giongco did not confirm if he had been banned from the camp.
But he did give a hint of the order of business when he said “everybody with no official business was ordered out of the Wild Card gym” during Pacquiao’s training hours.
“Outside the gym, I’m the boss, but when I’m training, they are the boss,” Giongco quoted Pacquiao as saying “as he defended his handler’s decision to keep fans away until the fight is over.”
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Of course, they were being unfair to the seasoned Bulletin boxing writer, himself a practitioner of the Sweet Science.
Giongco was no ordinary kibitzer, no plain autograph hunter.
He had, in the past, also given tips and supported Pacquiao in training.
He was a member of the cast when Pacquiao stopped Marco Antonio Barrera in San Antonio, Texas, in November 2003.
He was really buddy-buddy with Pacquiao, and your reporter here, a team outsider, can attest to that.
In short, Giongco could be considered an unofficial member of Team Pacquiao.
But our friend had been deemed lacking in proper credentials this time out.
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Not one to be caught sulking, Giongo fired off a brief report from L.A. yesterday, but it was solely on bantamweight prospect Rey “Boom Boom” Bautista and Diosdado “Prince” Gabi who have arrived from Manila to train under Roach.
Let’s just hope and pray Giongco is able to dish out something special from inside Team Pacquiao today.
You see, Giongco had reported exclusively on a secret weapon Pacquiao was supposed to have bared in his title fight against double-world featherweight champ Juan Manuel Marquez last year.
The secret weapon did not materialize, Pacquiao was solidly out-punched the rest of the match after having floored Marquez three times in the first round.
Then there was the very mysterious Manila Ice, another secret in the Pacquiao arsenal that had been scheduled to be exploded against Erik Morales in Las Vegas last March.
Well, if Manila Ice, another Roach creation, did actually materialize, it had obviously frozen Pacquiao dumb as he became a tame, predictable victim of Morales’ ring expertise.
With those back-to-back flops, only a formula from the likes of the infamous Garci of the Gloriagate scandal should be able to help our hero score a win this time out. They have got to hide.
