Pacquiao doles out $12,000 each for 2 biggest losers

By: Mark Giongco - 9 years ago

HOLLYWOOD—The biggest losers were also the biggest winners.

Former boxer Arnel Fontanilla and caregiver Kharzma Tan shed off almost 32 kilograms combined in just a span of five weeks to win $12,000 each in Manny Pacquiao’s weight-loss challenge on Sunday night.

Fontanilla dropped close to 15.4 kg as he tipped the scales before a crowd made up of Team Pacquiao members and a throng of reporters both from the United States and the Philippines.

THEWINNERS of Manny Pacquiao’s weight-loss challenge competition, a sideshow to the coming fight between Pacquiao and Floyd Mayweather Jr., are shown above. Contestants who lose 15 percent of their initial weight in one month take home $2,000. The “biggest loser” wins an additional $10,000 prize. REM ZAMORA

Close to 100 people took part in the challenge. Some members of Team Pacquiao and a nutritionist monitored the participants.

“Just hard work and discipline,” said Fontanilla, a member of Team Pacquiao who must wake up early in the morning to join Pacquiao in jogging. “Masaya na kasama ko siya. Isang karangalan na kasama ko siya sa pagtakbo araw-araw (I’m happy to be with him. It’s an honor to run daily with him).”

Tan said winning came as a huge surprise to her. She shed off a little over 22 percent of her weight despite not doing anything in the last six days leading up to the participants’ final weigh-in at the Florentine Gardens Hollywood.

“It was fun but it was tiring and you just wanted to sleep and make up by eating,” said Tan, who has been working in Los Angeles since 2009.

“I didn’t expect to win because these last six days I didn’t [go on] workout. I just stayed home and rested.”

Apart from losing weight, the participants were required to memorize and recite three verses from three different books of the Bible.

For more updates on Pacquiao-Mayweather “Fight of the Century,” visit The Pacquiao Files.

Originally posted: 5:32 PM | Monday, April 20th, 2015