(BIG RACING WIN: “A big triumph for the racing public,” said Vic Victoria, trusted top aide of Mandaluyong Mayor Benhur Abalos, whose prized racer, Hagdang Bato, was robbed of a vital victory in the President’s Cup on Dec. 1 due to the negligence of stewards who failed to acknowledge the gate accident that hampered the Horse of the Year. The Philippine Racing Commission has slapped host Manila Jockey Club a maximum P50,000 fine, racing manager Jose Ramon Magboo was fined P10,000, while four stewards were suspended for 10 (racing) days, to be served on rotation basis. While noting that the penalties were somewhat light, horse owner Albert Yam has suggested they should install instant-replay cameras, like those used in the Philippine Basketball Association, in order to lessen fraud and discrepancies.}
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UNLIKE that fight week in Macau last month when he loomed larger, more luminous than President Aquino, it’s no longer easy saying nice things about Manny Pacquiao, the politician.
Pacquiao, the boxer, who turns 35 today, did prove to the world how good and well-rounded he is as an elite gladiator.
His masterful conquest of the bigger, younger Brandon Rios, in fact, resulted in another loud clamor for a decisive megabuck bout with unbeaten world pound-for-pound boxing king Floyd Mayweather, Jr.
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Rios humbly accepted defeat by acknowledging Pacquiao’s vast superiority in speed and quickness.
Pacquiao, on the other hand, said that if he had any difficulty, it was the fact that “Rios was quite easy to hit.”
Then they went their separate ways and, by a strange twist, they met two separate adversaries outside the boxing ring.
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Pacquiao was stunned with a huge, shocking tax case by his own government.
Not much later, Rios was charged with using strength-enhancing substances in his bout against Pacquiao.
How the two ring rivals reacted to the postfight tests spoke volumes of their genuine sportsmanship—or the lack of it.
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Pacquiao cried foul, thereby charging political harassment.
He also unwittingly brought the tax case before sympathetic countrymen.
Rios said he was never into drugs or illegal substances, thereby categorically denying the charges.
Rios was next slapped a five-month ban by the China Professional Boxing Association, which was next acknowledged by the World Boxing Organization (WBO).
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The Rios camp challenged authorities to prove their charges.
But while waiting for a local hearing on his tax appeal, scheduled by the court on Jan. 15, Pacquiao was next slapped a federal tax lien for $18.3 million (about P790 million) by the US Internal Revenue Service.
Pacquiao, indeed, has all the right to contest the tax charges both at home and in the United States.
But, by now, it has become clear why he’s being hobbled down by monumental tax problems.
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“Quite unfortunate, because it’s a moral— definitely not a political-issue,” rued a media man who has been associated with Team Pacquiao through the years of covering the Filipino boxing superhero.
But more than prove he’s not guilty, he added, it’s Pacquiao’s role—he being a national treasure—to stop being pictured as an international tax cheat.
“He owes it to his countrymen to protect his noble image,” the media man said.