Mendoza: Pacquiao for president

WE have this age-old saying: “Patay kung patay.” Fatalistic.

Its first rough translation in English: “If you die, you die.”

Second English translation, a bit slang, is: “If you gotta go, you gotta go.”

But to the pious, this: “If it’s your time, God’s will be done.”

Manny Pacquiao’s pick? All of the above, I guess.

In a horrifying disclosure on Thursday, Pacquiao had actually defied doctor’s orders not to fight Lucas Matthysse on July 15 in Kuala Lumpur.

Just barely a week before the bout, Pacquiao was airlifted from GenSan to San Juan’s Cardinal Santos Hospital for shortness of breath. He’s been having bouts of that during training, forcing him to reportedly skip a total of nine days of road and gym work.

Tests at Cardinal Santos on Pacquiao lasting hours from basically angiogram procedures showed a heart ailment. Congenital. If it’s luck or something, nothing to worry about. Nothing serious.

Still, insiders insist that Pacquiao had been strongly ordered to cancel his date with Matthysse. When Pacquiao refused, doctors rammed in a waiver. Meaning, if something untoward happened to Pacquiao during the fight, the doctors are freed of any liability.

Fortunately, mercifully, enough, the fight went well. Swell. Why, Pacquiao even scored a stunning seventh-round technical knockout victory—his first stoppage win in nine years.

The good thing about the fight (non-fight, actually?) was, Pacquiao had practically an easy time as Matthysse did not really show up, virtually, in the bout.

He even gifted Pacquiao one knockdown by kneeling down in the fifth when he was clearly in a position to slug it out—a no-no in boxing, especially that this was a world championship match.

So, the question: Why did Pacquiao not call off the fight—he being the promoter himself? Doesn’t he value life, his own life at that that was at stake?

Ageless sports columnist Recah Trinidad quoted Aquiles Zonio, Pacquiao’s information officer, as saying: “Pacquiao risked his life to fulfill his mission to make his countrymen proud and happy.”

Well, what can I say?

Pacquiao for president. (Pacquiao’s camp has refuted his own information officer’s article. Please see Page 17--Editor)

GREETINGS. Happy birthday to writer-journalist Sol F. Juvida (July 23), the beloved comadre of Mike Limpag.

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