Pacquiao's back, boxing returns to life

SACRAMENTO— Boxing, lifeless for months without Manny Pacquiao at center stage, has sprung back to prominence on California’s sports pages with the return of the Filipino fighter to the Wild Card Boxing Club in Hollywood.

The Los Angeles Times led the sport’s Lazarus-like return from the dead with an item by boxing writer Lance Pugmire, in the paper’s popular Fabulous Forum blog about the “who, what, where, when, why and why not of LA sports.”

Pugmire, content with writing about UFC events while Pacquiao trained in Baguio City for his Nov. 14 fight with Miguel Cotto, easily snagged the muse to chronicle Manny’s resumption of his training at the famous gym, and then some.

The writer has zeroed in on the apparent wedge between the world’s top boxer and his mercurial but talented trainer, Freddie Roach for all of Los Angeles and California to ponder.

“Will Manny Pacquiao’s political aspirations hurt his boxing?” screamed the headline of Pugmire’s piece.

It is no secret that Pacquiao plans to run again for a congressional seat in the May elections, this time in his wife’s home province, Sarangani. He will be up against a scion of another politically entrenched clan—the Chiongbians.

Still tormenting the Pacman to this day is his inglorious congressional defeat to a member of the formidable Antonino dynasty in his native South Cotabato, after investing time in the hustings and untold millions of pesos.

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Roach, according to Pugmire, understands his boxer’s ardent desire to help poor people as a legislator. But Roach tells the Times he and Pacquiao’s inner circle would rather have the fighter “chase a politician’s seat when his fighting career is over.”

Manny thinks he can live the dual life of a boxer and a politician.

"But I believe he cannot do both,” Roach stressed.

The political angle of the Filipino fighter’s life also became a subplot of the initial segment of HBO’s promotional series “24/7” to market the Pacquiao-Cotto bout at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas. The series is a must see for ardent boxing fans, including legions of Pacman’s Filipino-American supporters.

At one point in the show, Pacquiao was shown in his Baguio hotel suite, nonchalantly shrugging off an impassioned plea by Roach to leave the City of Pines for Manila pronto before another brewing typhoon strands them in the high country.

The scene switches the next day on Pacquiao holding a tete-à-tete on the hotel grounds with unannounced presidential candidate Manny Villar.

An apparently agitated Roach was then seen approaching the duo and rudely interrupting their one-on-one about what we’ll have to guess, pleading with the boxer to return to Manila now with an expletive tossed in, leaving Senator Villar, the would-be president, more befuddled than irritated.

Source: http://sports.inquirer.net/professional/professional/view/20091101-233481/Pacquiaos-back-boxing-returns-to-life