Pacquiao: The King Of Gensan

To the doughnut peddlers in General Santos City (Gensan), the construction workers in Manila, the cigarette vendors in Quezon City, the King has come! It is fascinating to watch Manny Pacquiao’s victory parades in the Philippines, this past week. Millions and millions of people lined up to catch a glimpse of THE PEOPLE’S CHAMP. For one day, during his fight, offices closed down, business stopped, criminals took a day off and  soldiers and rebels chose to watch him on a television screen, rather than kill each other.

I was befuddled to see the adulation and worship around him. It seems a bit absurd that the hopes and dreams of a country were placed on the shoulder of a mere sports hero. For me, it just seems too much for one man to carry this entire load. To make some sense of this whole spectacle, I had to look at his past and where he came from.  And somehow, I begin to understand.

In Gensan, where he was raised, what he accomplished just doesn’t happen. A doughnut peddler like him, sometimes, will get lucky and after a lifetime of work, will get to own his own cart and do his business. A construction worker in Manila, a job Manny did as well, will scrape together a lifetime’s savings and maybe he will have enough to build his own home, the one that doesn’t leak during the monsoons.

With all the accolades and worship that will be coming to Manny in the next few weeks

---the pound for pound king, the fighter of the year, a statue on the way, the endless victory parades, nothing compares to the fight that he just won, not for himself but for his people.

His next opponent, may it be the past pound for pound king, the Mancurian prince or the Mexican dynamite and even the Tornado, no matter how hard they’ll train, will soon find out; that they just could not match the power of this man. Because in every punch and flurry that he throw, packs in it the strength and hope of ninety million people. They will soon understand that this is Manny’s destiny and we all know that there should only be one ending to this story.

And for once, a nation suffering for generation upon generation has something to look forward to. The peddler can at long last dream, that perhaps it is still possible to win in life. The vendor can finally lift his head up knowing that someone from his deep hole made it, and maybe he himself can make it as well. And while his head is up, he can now shout out to the world, “Yes, I am the next king of Gensan”.