In a much-hyped event, Philippine boxer Manny Pacquiao defeated American Shane Mosley by unanimous decision last Saturday in Las Vegas... The Saturday night fight was broadcast in the Philippines on Sunday morning. In this ostensibly Catholic country churches stand vacant. The crowded streets of Manila are empty. Bar after bar is filled with a crush of patrons raptly watching the event on big screen TVs. Cinemas across the country sell out tickets to view the fight in the theater. In remote locations entire communities huddle around radios... In shantytowns, large crowds gather tightly together around small TVs...for community viewing...
Like almost every boxing figure before him, Pacquiao came from a life of grinding poverty... Pacquiao dropped out of school in sixth grade and began working in the marketplace to help support his family. At fourteen he ran away from home, and stowed away on a boat bound for Manila, hoping to become a boxer. He wound up living in a run-down training facility for boxers, sleeping in the ring. He was not fighting, he was working in a metal recycling facility in Taguig, Metro Manila, scraping rust off of old scraps of metal. He was paid 160 pesos a day, well below minimum wage.
Pacquiao got his boxing break at the age of 16 when a spot opened up for him. Pacquiao had travelled from General Santos City with Eugene Barutag, another teenager who aspired to boxing. Barutag boxed two matches...In his third fight he was beaten unconscious in the eighth round and died. Pacquiao took his place in an upcoming fight. He stood 4 foot 11 and weighed in at 98 pounds. He had to put scraps of metal in his shoes to reach the needed minimum weight...
As Pacquiao gained international prestige, Philippine politicians glommed onto him with their customary parasitism... Former President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo made speeches about the ‘heroism’ of Pacquiao and the restoration of Philippine national pride. The Philippine mainstream media has told the same story. Pacquiao is the story of ‘the Filipino’ proving his worth to the world. This is not the reason why millions of Filipinos follow Pacquiao’s fights. It is the story of Pacquiao’s life, and the poverty from which he emerged, which have made his bouts so compelling...
Spun as a Horatio Alger moralistic lesson, his life story becomes a painfully obvious falsehood. It was not determination or his extraordinary prowess which brought Manny Pacquiao fortune, but a series of chance events and of victories which, by their very nature, could only happen to one man among millions...It is only by the most unlikely of chances that remarkable athletic talents like those of Louis, Frazier, Ali, or Pacquiao are discovered under capitalism. The vast wealth of human potential is stultified. Many more human talents than the ability to box wither, because capitalism is incapable of turning them into profit and has condemned their holders to a life of poverty and ignorance...
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2011/may2011/phil-m09.shtml
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