AS I was doing my usual morning walk around our village I cannot help hearing the radios in the houses along the route. My attention was caught by the statement to the effect that some politician out there (Was it Mike Arroyo?) is going to get Manny Pacquiao to run for Congress, supposedly to break the political grip of the Antoninos on this part of the country.
In the local TV evening newscast the same idea was floated around by way of randomly asking a number street and marketplace habitu? of voting age, what they felt about it. Expectedly, as indicative of the mentality of our voting population, the answers were overwhelmingly favorable to the idea.
Any sensible Juan would say such is a crazy proposition. Manny may be the best boxer in the world today and probably the most popular person there is in this country if not the whole world. However, to put him up for Congressman is a cruel proposition. Whoever that salamagan who conceived the idea ought to be thrown to the Sarangani Bay with a millstone tied around his neck.
Of course, Manny will win, even if he runs for president, given the mentality of our voters. If our kind of electors can vote Senators, comedians and ballplayers, why not an overwhelming popular world champion boxer Congressman?!
My (unsolicited) advice to Manny is never to get sweet-talked into the sordid game of politics. Boxing is a dirty enough business but you’ve come on top of the heap. But politics is a different kind of filth altogether. It is even dirtier. It’s like acidic ooze that will in time overwhelm you and eat up your whole being including you soul. And when you begin to stink they will just dump you like they would a rotten tomato. If you have met some dirty characters in the boxing milieu, you will meet wolves is sheep’s clothing in politics. Yes, you can get very rich if you know how to play the dirty game, help yourself on its juices, as most of our politicians do. But if you are not trained in the political hard knocks, na?ve and trusting, you could end up with the stinking dirty end of the proverbial stick.
Get one, two or three more mega-buck fights or quit before turning thirty, as they say, “quit while the quitting is good”. Maybe a Pacquiao–Barrera II and maybe a Pacquiao-Morales III and not for less than $5 million each and that’s it. That will tide you over even two lifetimes if you are careful. You can take the lives of some of the greatest boxing legends–Joe Louis, Alexis Arguello, our own Navarrete, and William Magahin–for reference.
As I said, this is only an unsolicited advice. So take it or leave it.
