Air Pacquiao carries bigger delegation

Gary Gittelson, former world boxing champ Brian Viloria’s manager, gave his fearless forecast  on the Manny Pacquiao-Antonio Margarito fight scheduled Nov. 14 Manila time at the Dallas Cowboy Stadium in Dallas, Texas.
“I don’t give Margarito a chance!” Gary told the press without batting an eyelash moments after Viloria, dubbed “The Hawaiian Punch,” knocked out Sor Veerapol of Thailand in  the 7th round of last Friday’s main event  in Solar’s fifth edition of Boxing at the Bay.
 “Pacquiao is one monster of a fighter,” Gittelson added, as if to explain the basis of his prediction.
* * *
With only less than a week before the showdown in Dallas,  the anticipation among boxing fans all over the world is rising to a fever pitch. The Pacman is out to collect an unprecedented  eighth division title and the whole world wants to see how he’s going to do it.
Just like he did for his fight with Ghanaian Joshua Clottey earlier this year also in Dallas, Texas,  Pacquiao chartered a Boeing 757 to carry his close to 200-pax entourage from Los Angeles to Dallas.
Manny’s entourage is composed of Team Pacquiao, family, friends, media and about 50 fellow congressmen and politicians. Manny’s delegation for the Clottey fight was less, only 139 to be exact.
But then he was not yet a congressman at the time. The 757 can accommodate up to 279 passengers.
Pacquiao paid a cool hundred thousand dollars for the chartered plane. It’s likely that he will also shoulder expenses for  hotel accomodations.
Compared to Pacquiao, President Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino had a much  smaller entourage when he travelled to Vietnam to attend an Asean summit meeting recently.
Only 53 people tagged along, according to a Malacañang reporter who said that the projected delegation for his forthcoming trip to Japan will be less than 60.
 Incidentally, I wonder what happened  to the complaint filed against Pacquiao by a group of Filipinos based in Texas.
From what I understand, Manny committed to attend an expensive per plate dinner tendered in his honor by the Filipino community last September. He cancelled at the last minute.
* * *
 Local boxing aficionados have been asking for the result of the Asian Boxing Confederation elections where our own ABAP President Ricky Vargas has been nominated for the Executive Committee.
Ricky is back in the Philippines now, but even while he was in Almaty, Kazakhstan, he texted to inform us that the  election was postponed to a much later date.
 “The ASBC has decided to postpone the election after extensive debate. I voted against it for the following reasons:
 “One,  it is not constitutional; two, the longer we wait to elect new leadership in ASBC, the more difficult it will be to attain unity in Asia, the most disunited continent; three, I wanted to avoid the resurgence of power blocs that may affect the process to elect qualified candidates who want change and good governance and four,  any further delay will affect ASBC programs.”
 Majority voted in favor of the postponement and Ricky had no choice but to abide.  The election will be held in the same venue—Almaty.