Fresh insight on Pacquiao; new avenue to London

Have our amateur boxing leaders adopted a new tack in their all-out drive to qualify as many fighters as possible for next year’s Olympics?
Three Thai boxers advanced to the London Games against only one from the Philippines in the last Baku World Boxing Championships.
Boxing expert Hermie Rivera, who has delivered two world champions for the Philippines, now wonders if the Amateur Boxing Association of the Philippines has made a last-minute shift in its drive to bag a medal or two in London.
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“This is terrific, first time I had noticed a campaign of this sort,” Rivera e-mailed from his nest in Newark, California.
Hermie said that, at first, he could not believe what he had suspected.
“But why not, they could be doing it Chairman Mao-style,” he explained, a bit puzzled.
It could be circuitous, more arduous and expensive, but if it was the only way left, why not?
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Light flyweight Anthony Barriga advanced to the Olympics after losing to China’s Zou Shiming, who eventually won the gold medal in Baku, in the process towing to London the losing Filipino fighter.
Top Filipino hope Rey Saludar failed to advance in the flyweight class after dropping a decisive bout to a lowly regarded American, who himself got crushed in the next round.
There will be succeeding qualifiers where losing Filipino bets should not be promptly counted out, based on Barriga’s glad fate.
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Of course, Barriga’s surprise entry was not in the main plan of the national boxing team.
“But that could be as good as coming into the capital (of power) from the countryside, with very little fanfare,” Hermie suggested.
Was it not also equal to “lying down and bleeding a little, before rising again?”
Maybe, Hermie said, sounding not too amused.
He instead requested Abap to also follow up solid tips from the South that, in Cebu alone, there were a handful of simonpures, a couple of whom shone with the dazzling gifts of Floyd Mayweather Jr., who preferred to stay away from the Abap junior program.
Why?
“They have been alienated from the main source of power in the area.”
This was confirmed by one boxing broadcaster, who works with the Peñalosas, in a recent series of talent scouting sorties in Cebu.
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WILL Manny Pacquiao end up running for President of the Philippines?
It’s too early to say.
However, Gary Andrew Poole, multiawarded writer based in Los Angeles, appeared ready to place a small bet on the Pacman going all the way for a shot at the presidency.
Poole, a previous Manila visitor who writes for Time, New York Times and Esquire Magazine, has in fact added a new chapter to his successful “Pacman: Behind the Scenes with Manny Pacquiao.”
The leather-bound edition, which sold hot and was picked by the Guardian among the best books of 2010, will be available in paperback starting Nov. 1.
The bonus chapter zeroes in on Pacquiao’s political wallop—and the lack of it?
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FILIPINO portrait artist Claire Malanyaon-Leuterio will hold an exhibit at the Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas in time for the Pacquiao-Marquez trilogy. Her publicist, veteran news correspondent Jun Velasco of Dagupan, said Leuterio was confirmed as Pacquiao’s official artist during a recent meeting with the boxing icon at the Manila Hotel.
The artist, Velasco said, chided “a certain Jun Aquino for stealing her title without any say-so from Pacquiao.”
Leuterio was honored recently by the House of Representatives.
Velasco said Pangasinan Gov. Amado Espino has asked the artist to exhibit her works on Pacquiao and other world sporting greats like Marquez, Kobe Bryant, Floyd Mayweather Jr., after she’s done with her Las Vegas show.
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(HELP: The price of a can of sardines, a report said, has gone up 40 percent from P10 to P14… a piece of siling pansigang sold for P5 in the Mandaluyong City wet market Tuesday morning… another report noted a large portion of the disposable income of poor Filipino families goes to food and energy, “among the highest in the world.”)