A couple of weekends ago my brother took me to Las Vegas to watch the Pacquiao v. De La Hoya fight. I’ve got a great brother.
We had been watching the HBO series: Pacquiao / De La Hoya 24/7 every night up to our departure so we were very much anticipating going to the MGM Grand to catch the match.
We arrived Friday night. The fight was Saturday night. We grabbed a late dinner at our hotel and walked up and down the Las Vegas Strip for a few minutes before I started getting sleepy. I headed to our room and he hit the casino floor.
Saturday morning he came in from the casino, got a little sleep, and we had lunch with our cousins who live in Henderson, just outside Las Vegas. From the restaurant we returned to the hotel to park the car and then we headed to the MGM.
We kept going back and forth between watching the fight in person or going to the closed-circuit simulcast in another wing of the MGM. He had made more than enough in the casino to cover the cost of the arena tickets but somewhere deep down we knew that arena tickets would be too extravagant. Decidedly, we got our tickets and then headed to the simulcast in the Grand Conference Room. It was the smart choice.
MGM set up six jumbo screens, three on each side of the room. Chairs were arranged in rows before each screen and each section was separated by a nice wide aisle. The center of the room was reserved for a rather elegant looking concession stand. The difference between this room and the other, cheaper closed-circuit room was space.
There was so much time before the main fight that Santos went to the other room to see what that was like. Tickets to that room were a bit cheaper and he wanted to see what we gave up. Boy was it worth the extra cash. Santos said the other room was packed. People were lined up against the walls and there was no space in the middle of the room for the concession stand. It was all chairs and people. By contrast, there was an average of five to seven people per row (30 seats to a row) in our room.
Santos and I have been to quite a few sporting events and we’ve seen our share of big nights. We’ve seen a World Series game at Comiskey; he was working the final quarter mile on the day I ran the Chicago Marathon; and now we can say we saw Pacquiao defeat De La Hoya.
Fight night was different.
In Comiskey, we were Sox fans born and raised in Chicago. On Marathon day we were brothers on different sides of the same event. At the MGM, we were two Filipino brothers who came from Chicago to watch a great boxer from the Philippines and we came to watch him win.
During the eighth round I thought I saw Manny ease up a little bit. By the eighth it was easy to see Manny was going to win but I think he actually felt bad that he was winning so easily. My hunches were confirmed when, at the end of the eighth round, Freddie Roach (Manny’s trainer) looked him in the eye and said, “Look at me. It’s your job. You have to finish this man.”
When I watch that I actually get a chill. I know Filipinos and we’re incredibly tough but we’re also incredibly warm-hearted. We’re up for a fight but we feel bad when we clearly have the upper hand. That’s what separates us from Americans.
Even my brother was saying after the fight that Oscar had earned his reputation and it was just his time to step down. My brother said that. He’s the one who is now going to walk around Chicago with an M4 assault rifle for work and he’s the one who will be knocking down doors to serve warrants and he’s the one who, with the rest of his unit, will be buying time for the SWAT guys when something big happens. He has a heart as big as the assault rifle he uses for work.
That’s just how Filipinos are.
And that’s what I saw in Manny’s eyes at the end of the eighth round. He was looking at his trainer as if to say, “Let me ease up so Oscar can make it to the twelfth round.” But it just wasn’t meant to happen.
The more I think about the fight the more I see that there were two different people in the ring that night. One was a great boxer and the other was a savy business man. De La Hoya, as a result of all the promotional deals, will actually walk away with twice the amount of money as Manny. Pacquiao earned $11 million that night. Oscar will walk away with at least $25 million from all of his deals.
I suppose I could get cynical about the money and the hype but the truth of the matter is that my brother and I had a great time and we both knew that our cousins in Niles and our friends in Chicago and our parents and relatives in the Philippines all shared the same event from our different seats all over the world. In fact, during the fight Santos got a text from his friend in Chicago that said, “Go Philippines!” Santos laughed because he knew his caucasian buddy (a fellow officer) couldn’t spell “Pacquiao.”
Only a sporting event can bring people together that way. And believe me when I say that if ever there was a people that needs to find unity and their place in this world… Filipinos are that people.
