MICHAEL MARLEY’S PHILIPPINE DIARY, PART 16:
ELECTION DAY LOOMS; PACMAN CO-TRAINER ‘NOT SCARED’ OF FLOYD MAYWEATHER JR.; BOB ARUM TREATED LIKE LOCAL HERO AROUND PACQUIAO HOME CITY; FINAL CONGRESSIONAL RACE RALLY TODAY IN SARANGANI
GENERAL SANTOS?When a raggedy, scrawny teenager named Manny Pacquiao was so poor that could not even pay attention, Buboy Fernandez was his best buddy.
After a determined Pacquiao had moved to Metro Manila, where he often slept on the dusty streets and sold cigarettes to earn enough coins to buy a bowl of rice, he insisted that Buboy come along for the ride.
I’m going to become a world famous and wealthy boxer, the starry-eyed Pacquiao told his chubby pal. I want you to come along for the ride, to be my constant companion.
Without any other options looming, Buboy became Manny’s tagalong. Buboy slept on the floor in the fighter’s tiny bedroom. In order not to rankle anyone, Pacquiao told his friend to tell everyone he was his cousin.
Top of the world after rise from abject despair and poverty, boyhood buddies Buboy Fernandez, who plays Sancho Panza to Manny Pacquiao as Don Quixote. (AP Photo)
One day, Manny suggested that Buboy study the trainers in the gym and said that could be a career for him.
Today, Buboy is considered the Freddie Roach of the Philippines and he works with many other ring stars in addition to Megamanny.
If we can refer to Pacman as Don Quixote, then the 35 year old Buboy is his Sancho Panza and they want to tilt at Mayweather and not at windmills.
