Tuesday, January 24, 2006
Kwentong Pacman
Last Sunday morning, Leks, Jonas, Frank, JAm, Ivan and I all hied off to Megamall to worship at the Church of Pacquiao. We sat patiently through the undercards, made fun of Quinito Henson, watched the replay of the first fight as we pretended to be boxing experts, and made some more fun of Quinito Henson. I even paid 70 bucks for a large popcorn, and the dork that I am, even took a couple of photos inside the theater.
Of course everyone knows what happened by now, but let me just add a few more things:
-- The 300 bucks we paid was so, so worth it. As Leks put it afterwards, "Kahit 600 yun, sulit eh." Of course, it might have been different if Pacman had lost.
-- As early as three hours before the fight, everyone was cheering everytime Manny was shown on the screen.
-- During a long break prior to the fight, we got to talking about Manny's CD, which was being sold outside the theaters. The lead single was this awful, awful ballad called "Para Sa 'Yo ang Laban na Ito" (or something like that), which he sang (quite badly) with little prodding during some of his interviews before he left for the US to train. Then we started wondering what his entrance music would be, and someone joked that it would be his own song. So his actual entrance music? A remix of his own song.
-- Even as Jennifer Bautista screwed up the national anthem, everyone in the theater politely stood up and broke into cheers as she finished.
-- Was I the only guy who wished that after singing the Mexican and the US national anthems, Jon Secada had refused to give the mic back and instead start on "Just Another Day Without You"?
-- By the seventh round, when Manny had Morales on the ropes, it was so loud in the theater that no one could hear Quinito creaming his pants anymore. Everyone was screaming, high-fiving, and even hugging each other and it was like a college basketball game, only everyone in the place was on your side.
-- The best thing about the morning was of course Manny winning the fight? Why, Manny's post-fight interview with Mario Lopez, aka Slater from "Saved by the Bell". It went something like this:
Slater: "So Manny, what was the difference between this and the first fight."
Manny, thinking about the question for a moment: "In this fight, I knock him out in the 10th round and I win..."
Us: "Tangina Manny, buti na lang champion ka."
-- Not only were we spared GMA's post-fight interview, we (along with pretty much else in the theater) got to boo quite heartily when Chavit Singson and Mike Arroyo were shown on screen climbing the ring and congratulating Manny.
-- Almost as soon as the fight finished, the place lit up with cellphones, as everyone tried to text everyone they know about the results (I tried taking a photo of it, but it was still too dark).
After the fight, we decided to celebrate with pizza and beer at Shakey's. Hehe, how '80s (and early '90s)! But then, considering that Jon Secada and Mario Lopez were the entertainers present during the fight...
(At siyempre, tanghaling tapat pa talaga kami nag-inuman, 'di ba?)
And then after lunch we still hung out for about a couple of hours at Starbucks just talking about the fight very loudly, so much so that some of the yuppies there started giving us weird looks. We only stopped when it was time for Ivan and Frank to be somewhere else. As we were leaving, Leks quipped, "Shit, excited na akong mag-boxing message boards para magbasa ng comments tungkol kay Pacquiao."
