By Alex P. Vidal
“You have to beat the king to be the king. No one is going to hand you a gold medal.” — Donovan Bailey
WE can never produce another Manny Pacquiao in 100 years.
No doubt he is the greatest Pinoy professional boxer and the most accomplished and flamboyant to ever sweeten the dirty world of prizefighting.
The world boxing belts Pacquiao, 42, had collected in more than 20 years of lording over the brutal sport consisted of championships in eight different weight categories, a rare achievement for any pugilist since the adoption of the Marquess of Queensberry Rules in 1889.
In terms of popularity, Hidilyn Diaz, 30, who recently produced the Philippines’ first-ever gold medal in the Summer World Olympic Games Tokyo 2020, pales in comparison to the charismatic senator-boxer who aims to establish another record when he tackles Errol Spence Jr. in a 12-round world welterweight match in Las Vegas on August 21.
In terms of achievement in the world of sports, however, Diaz’s Olympic gold medal may be more valuable than the combined eight world boxing crowns Pacquiao had amassed.
The modern World Olympic Games (Summer and Winter) is the biggest and leading sporting event in the world participated by more than 200 countries. It was said that even the aliens from other planets monitored the opening ceremonies of the 1936 Berlin Olympics.
Not all athletes can qualify in the Games; they must pass through the proverbial eye of the needle in tough regional qualifying rounds. The system will ensure that only the best can reach and take part during the Day of the Reckoning.
-o0o-
All competitors are as tough as nails; there are no pushovers, all world class athletes with scintillating credentials to parade and brag about.
In order to reach the medal column, an Olympian must labor hard like Sisyphus, condemned to forever roll a boulder up a hill in the depths of Hades as a punishment from Zeus.
Diaz went through that arduous and heavy sacrifices before pulling off a shock victory over her highly regarded Chinese rival for the gold medal. Petite but strong Diaz labored hard like digging the Gulag rocks before clobbering other qualifiers from weightlifting superpowers like Kazakhstan, Iran, Japan, Jordan, Russia.
An Olympic gold medal, the first since the Philippines joined the Games in 1924, can’t be matched by any medal or championship trophy outside the Olympic Games. It’s priceless, one of a kind, and the only medal that matters in any known sporting competition in the human history.
A boxing title, on the other hand, can be won by any handpicked (even substitutes who never went through the elimination process can participate in a world boxing championship) Filipino professional ringster in a commercial promotion anytime of the year.
Without defeating all the top 10 contenders in one division, a “world class” Filipino fighter can pole-vault his way automatically to the world championship through the “machination” and influence of matchmakers and promoters.
Which explains why 44 Filipino prizefighters have won world titles since 1923 when Francisco Guilledo a.k.a Pancho Villa bagged the world flyweight jewels by knocking out Jimmy Wilde to become the first world champion from Asia.
-o0o-
The Philippines isn’t stranger to winning world boxing crowns.
From 1935 to 1997, 25 more Filipino boxers became world champions after Guilledo.
This was before Pacquiao clinched the Philippines’ 27th world crown by putting away Chatchai Sasakul in a World Boxing Council (WBC) flyweight duel in Thailand in 1998.
Pacquiao, to his credit, worked hard to topple an assorted list of Mexican terrors, mostly semi-retired, and bankrolled millions of U.S. dollars for his efforts.
In securing the eight world crowns in eight different divisions, Pacquiao also didn’t have to eliminate all the top 10 contenders in each division.
Through the arrangement made by Top Rank’s Bob Arum, he fought for the world featherweight title against Juan Manuel Marquez in 2004 three years after snatching the IBF super-bantamweight crown from Lehlo Ledwaba in Las Vegas in 2001. And so on and so forth. No fisticuffs against the top 10 contenders under Marquez’s division.
Diaz’s gold medal came when the Philippines, which waited endlessly and frustratingly for nearly 100 years, was not anymore expected to improve its past medal haul of three silvers and seven bronzes, having lagged behind other Asian countries in the Games held every four years.
We can win another world boxing crown and add it to Pacquiao’s rich collection of belts if lady luck will smile at him against Spence Jr. on August 21, but winning another Olympic gold for the Filipinos is equivalent to another trip to planets Jupiter and Mars.
(The author, who is now based in New York City, used to be the editor of two dailies in Iloilo)
