Why is Manny Pacquiao, the big celebrity that he is right now, is so much attached to sabong (cockfighting)?  Here are a number of thoughts.

First, sabong is, like boxing, a fight.  The blood in the vessels of Pacquiao has so much sensitivity to the blood flowing in the arteries of cocks.  There’s the very close analogy of a fighting fowl and and a boxing champ, and for Pacquiao, the analogy can’t get any closer.  In the cockfighting ring, there’s no such thing as a unanimous decision.  The outcome is always by way of “knockout” so to speak, a thing so familiar with the PACMAN.  In fact, it’s not just so familiar; it his his trademark as a fighter.  As much as possible, Manny likes to maim, cripple, or smother his opponent almost to merciless submission much like what a winning rooster does to its dying adversary.

Second, Manny is a money player.  Cockfighting is basically for the money jugglers.  In his bouts, whether titles are at stake or not, there’s so much money involved.  It is not very impossible to believe that Manny himself places bets on his name.  He does not really care so much at the oddsmaking of his fights as he does to his power-punching fists that do what his bet asks him to do.  In the cockfighting venue, which takes on a misnomer as a sports center, Manny’s gambling instinct goes active as it does whenever he goes for that instance when his opponent will feel his awesome power.  In most of his fights this instinct proves effective and it does some parallel when he’s in the scrimmage of chickens for the entertainment and business pleasure of all sorts of people who are together with him in the place.

Third, though it may be considered as a distraction to Manny Pacquiao’s preparation, sabong per se is not an entirely bad thing for PACMAN.  Sabong is, for many poverty-stricken provincianos, an opportunity of instant money.  It is an option against poverty.  Being one former pauper, Manny may have had several visits to the cockpits of his hometown and he may have had wonderful experiences in their.  Now that he is a moneyed celebrity, he should be in “more honorable” gambling centers called casinos.  But Manny never forgets the poor that he was and he’s not one to readily admit that he has no business with the poor.  He goes there because he sees many of his kind.  When he enters a casino, he has no chance of finding a poor Manny Pacquiao.  In cockpit arenas, there are many Mannys.  We may not know it but I think Manny goes there ready to lose for the many to win.  How happy Manny is whenever his losing bets go to the hands of poor bettors and when he sees the satisfied smiles and sincere shouts of these people, he tells himself, “I’ve won again.”

Any comments?