PRESIDENT Arroyo yesterday gave an undisclosed sum to boxer Z “The Dream” Gorres to help him in his rehabilitation and to support his family.
Arroyo handed the money to Gorres and his family inside the Most Important Persons (MIP) lounge at the Mactan Cebu International Airport (MCIA), before she left for Manila.
President Arroyo visited Cebu yesterday to switch on a newly-built 82-megawatt (mw) power plant in Toledo City.
Gorres, who recently underwent an operation on his throat, told reporters he was glad the President found time to meet him and his family despite her hectic schedule.
Gorres said he wanted to ask Arroyo to push for legislation that will protect boxers who fight abroad, but he wasn’t able to do so because of the President’s tight schedule.
Gorres said he hoped no other boxer would suffer his fate.
With Gorres yesterday was his wife, Datches, and three of their four children—Dheybert, 8, Shyla Dhey, 5, and Zhey, 3.
Gorres is undergoing therapy in the Perpetual Succour Hospital in Cebu City so he can walk again without aid.
Datches, in a separate interview, said they were very happy that administrators of Perpetual Succour Hospital offered them a month’s worth of therapy sessions for free.
Therapy sessions that last from one to two hours in the hospital cost P450 a day.
Datches said her husband is also making progress after he was operated on for a surgical defect in his throat. He currently has a blow tube in his throat, she said.
Datches said that while her husband continues to recover from his injuries, she is pushing on with her soap-making business to support their family.
Dr. Ben Calderon, Gorres’ doctor in Las Vegas, was the one who introduced Datches to soap-making, through a group in Isabela.
Datches said she will be starting her business on March 8 and will soon be selling “Z Soap.”
Gorres suffered from a life-threatening head injury after being hit by a right punch by Luis Melendez in their Nov. 13, 2009 fight at the Mandalay Bay House of Blues in Las Vegas.
Gorres won the 10-round bout but he was rushed to the University Medical Center in Las Vegas after he collapsed. He immediately underwent an emergency brain surgery to ease the swelling in his brain and spent more than two months in the hospital.
He was discharged last January and started physical rehabilitation on his left arm and leg, which were weakened due to the injury on his brain.