DUE to circumstances within my control I ended up not seeing the live telecast of the Manny Pacquiao vs. Joshua Clottey fight.
And I guess, judging from the feedback, I turned out to be one of the lucky ones.
I could have been safely at the Parklane as early as 10 a.m., but I woke up a bit late and with only a faint idea of a column, hinge on one line only, that day.
Mico, my favorite six-month-old, wasn’t much of a help too. As I rushed past him, he smiled, a lot. Smiles that just make you stop what you’re doing. He, plus my column, was stealing my attention.
So there I was, catching up my deadline—unlike other columnists, I’ve imposed a 12 p.m. deadline on myself—with still only a paragraph done and with no idea where I could watch the Pacquiao fight.
Jack the Wack had a standing invitation, and I knew if I’d rush things I’d still be in time to watch Pacquiao vs. Clottey in Parklane, where I also watched Pacquiao vs. Miguel Cotto.
But while I was writing my column I had a brilliant idea of writing on another column—how to catch the Pacquiao fight live, without the hassle of leaving your house, or paying murderous fees.
My brilliant idea, well it turned out to be…just go back up and read the title.
I’ve watched previous Pacquiao fights—against Oscar dela Hoya, Eric Morales and Jorge Solis—on the Internet and I thought I’d get The Event off it, too.
Boy did that turn out to be one heck of an adventure.
My reliable source for live streams was on, but the links was more dead than yesterday’s fish.
At first I thought, they might have ignored the undercards and that they might be on during the main event.
It didn’t happen.
My Internet provider is also the provider of the PPV feeds, so I suspected, Skycable, again, did a number on us.
(A smart business decision for them, a really stupid one for us—come on, your competition is offering its subscribers to watch fights on their site!)
The supposedly fastest DSL in town was as fast as a dial-up that Sunday.
I got on a few sites and I finally managed to see the first few rounds of the undercard, but it was like a porn site, just when you get the hang of it you get a message that says, “Number of viewers exceeded, please purchase a premium account.”
Boy was I so thankful that Mico couldn’t understand a word I was shouting.
I returned to my reliable source, hoping that the links would be working.
No such luck.
All I got were “channel is offline” messages.
There was another option, but you have to download a software—something I did and uninstalled a few months back.
But guess what? Clicking download got you nowhere.
Oh how I loved the greatest show on earth that day.
I finally got on one working link but it was on pause every 30 seconds for 30 seconds, going live only for five seconds.
For every round, I was lucky to watch 20 seconds of action.
I gave up.
In the end, with the Internet and cable at my disposal, I got my most reliable updates through the radio—albeit one aired on cable.
But it turned out I was one of the lucky ones since I didn’t get to waste an hour watching a non-event.
(mikelimpag@gmail.com)
Published in the Sun.Star Cebu newspaper on March 20, 2010.