Thursday, June 04, 2009
Con-ass
I wrote about the con-ass at Fire Quinito, just because there's a bigger audience there. It's a sports blog, and I intend it to remain one, so I tied it up with our biggest sports star.Fire Quinito: Maybe Manny Pacquiao won't be so out of place in Congress after all
Labels: boxing, con-ass, firequinito, manny pacquiao, news and issues
Thursday, April 23, 2009
FQ cross-post
Several months ago, uncertainty surrounded the staging of the Donaire-Viloria card because of the lack of sponsors, and Solar was forced to postpone the fights. It did turn out to be a good move, and the sponsors must have been happy with the 32.3 rating that the event scored in Mega Manila, despite the absence of Pacman to pull the ratings up. Here's a chart to put the rating in context, against some of the most popular shows and events in the country:
No one expected that the ratings for this event would scratch Pacquiao fight levels; only big events such as the Marimar finale or Angel Locsin's first transformation into Darna ever get into that stratosphere. But the fight, despite numerous commercials and a dead timeslot, managed to draw about as much viewers as GMA's primetime programs, and more than either network's noontime shows. Put it this way: more people cared to watch Donaire and Viloria fight Raul Martinez and Ulises Solis than watch Gerald Anderson fight Jake Cuenca over Kim Chiu.
Read the whole thing over at Fire Quinito.
Saturday, January 03, 2009
Pac-man
Manny Pacquiao's wife Jinkee had originally wanted to name their newborn daughter Julia Margarette, but he didn't like the name. The champ put his foot down, and he got the name he wanted for his baby girl: Queen Elizabeth.Perfect, since it looks like he'll be challenging the people's champion from Britain, Ricky 'Hitman' Hatton, for his next fight.
Monday, December 08, 2008
Golden Boy
Bad Left Hook takes a close look at Oscar de la Hoya's career:When Oscar was 11 fights in, he took on Denmark's Jimmy Bredahl for the WBO junior lightweight title, and he kicked his ass. Two fights later, he got rid of tough Mexican Jorge Paez in two rounds, winning a lightweight title. John Avila, John John Molina, Rafael Ruelas -- they all fell to the young de la Hoya. These were good fighters.
Genaro Hernandez suffered his first loss at the hands of Oscar in 1995, retiring after six rounds. Hernandez's only other career loss came to Money Mayweather, who never lost to anybody he fought. Jesse James Leija was another '95 victim.
When he fought Julio Cesar Chavez in 1996, Chavez was 34 years old and had a history of wars that probably made him feel older. Oscar, perhaps in an attempt to become the new idol of the Mexican fight fans, took him on and destroyed him. It never sat well with a lot of Mexican fans, and neither did their 1998 rematch, when Oscar beat him again.
Between the two Chavez fights, he took the undefeated record of Miguel Angel Gonzalez, beat Hall of Famer Pernell "Sweet Pea" Whitaker, dumped David Kamau in two rounds, stomped Hector "Macho" Camacho over 12 rounds, and knocked out Wilfredo Rivera.
This is the period of Oscar's career that most interests me, because these days, you'd almost think he didn't do all of these things. You just read the name of some great fighters. Whitaker made the Hall of Fame in 2007. Chavez will as soon as he hits the ballot. There is real substance to the guys Oscar was beating in the 1990s.
It's easy to forget how invincible Oscar used to be; prior to that dancefest against Trinidad, he was 31-0. I think everyone who ever followed boxing, however, knows that Oscar jumped the shark in the Quartey fight.
(I still remember the fallout from that fight, which happened back during freshman year in college. All my buddies who are into boxing think Quartey got jobbed.)
Sunday, December 07, 2008
Superstar
Pac-man beat De La Hoya from pillar to post, and the whole world was watching:
There were the mainstream sports publications:
- ESPN
- Sports Illustrated
- Yahoo Sports
- Fox Sports
- Sky Sports
- Deadspin
- The Sporting News
- AOL FanHouse
The big papers:
- LA Times
- USA Today
- (UPDATE) The Guardian UK
- New York Times
- Chicago Sun-Times
- Seattle Post-Inteligencer
- San Francisco Chronicle
- Boston Globe
And dispatches from odd places:
- The Daily Nation (Kenya)
- Canadian Broadcasting Corporation
Of course, the world is atwitter as well:
And even MC Hammer is tweeting the action!
This is me pinching myself, because I still couldn't quite believe it.
Monday, March 17, 2008
You can judge the Pacquiao fight, even if it's not a book
Last night, while watching the ACC Championship game between UNC and Clemson, my roommate walked in with his boyfriend and asked me about the Pacquiao-Marquez match. Neither of them saw the fight, and they were curious about why there was such a fuss over the results.So I started to tell them about how boxing matches were decided, and how close the split decision was, and how it was usually up to the judges to decide such a close fight. I'd spend ten minutes explaining, and neither of them looked like they were able to wrap their heads around the idea.
Them: "So, the judges, they count the punches for each round?"
Me: "No. They try to figure out who won each round, who got the best shots in, who controlled the pace of the match."
Them: "We don't get it."
Me: "It's subjective. Parang judging Bb. Pilipinas."
Them: "Ahhh. Gets."
Sunday, October 07, 2007
Weekend sports update
MLB Playoffs. I love watching baseball in the mornings, a habit that started during my senior year in college. Baseball's actually perfect for when you're doing something else, whether it's preparing (and eating) breakfast, doing reports for school, checking email, or whatever else. My last sem in LB, when I only had a couple of subjects left, was a very lazy one. My mornings were free, and I had the house mostly to myself because my roommates were off doing crazy things like going to class, so I usually started my day watching ESPN (back then the channel had a ballgame on every day). Breakfast consisted of whatever I could find in the kitchen or in the fridge, whether it's leftover dinner, hotdogs, stale bread, or ice cream. I loved having ice cream for breakfast. I loved college.This season, I think ESPN signed a deal with the NY Yankees' broadcast network YES, so they showed mostly Yankee games. It was probably good for them as it's probably cheaper than a deal they would have signed with MLB's national carriers in the US, but I'm a Red Sox fan, so I watched a lot less baseball this year than I would have. But now it's the playoffs and ESPN is showing every game, so I could finally see all the best teams at play, and I finally get to watch the players and the teams that I've been reading about on Deadspin all these months.
That's how I spent my past few mornings. Breakfast was still whatever I could find in the fridge, but there's no ice cream this time. I didn't bother getting ice cream during my last trip to the grocery a couple of weeks ago. Big mistake.
Will to Win. As per our tradition, I went out with my buddies to Megamall this morning to watch the Pac fight at the cinema. It's always a recipe for fun, even though there were only four of us who made it this time. Between the nervous excitement in the atmosphere in the theater and your buddies around you who are ready to make corny jokes (and laugh wholeheartedly at the same corny jokes), it's really hard not to have a blast.
Rexona had a tie-up with Solar All-Access, so they had all these gimmicks inside the theater for the fight. They provided round girls for the event, and they started doing their thing from the very first fight (a dark match that wasn't on TV). When the round girl first held up the round number, the bored crowd, majority of whom was male, hooted and hollered at the girl. By the fourth or fifth round of the fight, the crowd had become tired of it, but the idea was lost on my friend Oliver, who sat beside me. He carried on cheering and clapping (alone, very loudly) everytime the round girl walked past the front, up until the end of the first fight.
Just before the start of the main event, Rexona decided to have another gimmick, this time bringing a cheering squad (complete with drums) to pep up the crowd. The problem was, the cheerleaders were male, just like in their ad campaign, and while it's a funny idea, everyone in the theater had a hard time looking at the squad as they did their routine. I was just thankful that it was short.
As for the card itself, we all enjoyed the undercard matches, but were a bit disappointed with the main event. Barrera fought not to lose, while Pacquiao looked (relatively, for him) listless, probably because he'd been spending more time with Ara Mina than with Freddie Roach. Hey, I'm happy he won, but he didn't looked far from being the best pound-for-pound fighter in the world.
(I complain, but as soon as I got home after lunch, I caught most the delayed telecast on GMA.)
UAAP Finals. Like most of my friends who aren't from La Salle, I was rooting for UE, mostly because of that unwritten rule that if you're a basketball fan and didn't come from either Ateneo or La Salle, you have to root against them. Now, I hate to say anything bad about 'The Bullet' because he's my favorite PBA point guard of all time from his Purefoods days, but he blew it. His brother Franz totally coached his pants off in that series. Why did he keep going with the big line-up (with Borboran at the wing) when La Salle's guards were killing them with dribble penetration off the screen-and-roll? Why were his best rebounders (Fampulme and Thiele) on the bench when La Salle's bigs were feasting on them on the offensive boards? Why did he stick with his equal opportunity motion offense in crunch time instead of going with the hot hand (Paul Lee)?
At least they had that 14-game winning streak.
Sports in General. This morning I was thinking about how my generation's the last ones who'll be into sports, in general. Ok, I'm probably a bad example, because I watch sports more than most anything on TV and I'd watch anything. Like, a few moments ago, while waiting for The OC to come, I was watching a re-run of a meaningless game between Air 21 and Welcoat from last conference, a match-up that features two mediocre, boring, nondescript ballclubs, neither of which I have any emotional attachment to.
(Oh, and say what you want about The Oc, but I love me my Taylor Townsend.)
But back to my point about the generation thing. Most of my friends, even those who aren't really big fans, can still be bothered to watch when there's a big game coming up. I have two brothers and a bunch of cousins who are younger than I am, and they're just not collectively into sports the way people my age (and older) collectively are. Even Ateneo vs. La Salle games, as fun as they are and as rabid as the students are, most kids who get into it turn out to be Ateneo fans and La Salle fans rather than basketball fans, and for that matter, sports fans, in general. Then again, it's hard to blame them; with everything else that's going on in the world, with cable TV, the Internet, advanced video game consoles, etc., why would they bother watching indifferent athletes with whom they have nothing in common, and why would they bother rooting for teams who just win, for the most part, enough to break their hearts?
Labels: basketball, boxing, pacquiao, sports
Thursday, April 12, 2007
Pagdating sa bakbakan, tutumba ang kalaban
I had a fun assignment at work a couple of weeks ago, for the Pacquiao-Solis site that we were developing. I had to sit down and watch the DVD of the Pacquiao-Morales fights, to select which clips to include in the fights file section of the site.Anyway, in spite of all the boxing action in the DVD, I have to say that this was my favorite clip of all:
This was awesome too.
