By Lynde Salgados
Correspondent
TO Manny Pacquiao’s staunch critics in Mindanao, his Sunday fight, August 22, with Cuban champion Yordenis Ugas is also a survival of his political career.
“Kay kon mapeldi hoyhoy gyod iyang abaga. Peldi pud iyang politika,” said Roberto Caballero of the Green CdeO Eagles Club (GCEC).
Fellow Kagay-anon Charome Marte of Metrobank also felt the same, though he suggests that if Pacquiao will not be lucky “he still has time to reconcile with the Dutertes whom he threatened with his aspiration for the country’s highest post.”
Both Caballero and Marte are among the diehard supporters of President Duterte in Mindanao who never wasted time to castigate the senator on social media right after his seeming ‘changed of heart’ in politics going into the opposition's direction.
Still, they believed Pacquiao will win the fight and so their bets on him.
“Idol gyod namo siya boxing-wise ayaw lang sa presidente,” the two said in unison, predicting Pacquiao will win by knockout.
Not everyone knows that Pacquiao is facing a formidable foe in Ugas who is like “Tugas” in local parlance or easily known as the hardest wood furniture in the Philippines.
For one, the WBA super welterweight titlist Ugas had never been knockout in his entire professional boxing career.
At 42, the Filipino icon (62-7- 2 laced with 39 KOs) is already at the twilight of his boxing career, trying to beat Father’s time. While the much taller and younger Ugas (26-4, 12 KOs) at 35 is still at the peak of his physical strength and is bent to maximize the rare opportunity as Error Spence Jr’s replacement when the WBC and IBF belts' holder got injured barely two weeks into the fight.
World champion Nonito Donaire Jr., when cornered in Vegas for an interview by the Filipino press, said Ugas is a good counter-puncher like retired Filipino boxer Rustico Torrecampo and Mexican legend Juan Manuel Marquez who both scored a knockout against the Pacman.
“Ugas is not that powerful but he’s a dangerous fighter because he packs wallops on both hands for great counter uppercuts,” the four-division world ruler Donaire said.
While Pacquiao is the odds-on pick, Donaire said Ugas can pull out a surprise via timing for a lucky punch knockout.
“That’s why Manny should not be complacent, even that Ugas is stationary or would always stay in front because he has a long reach and is a good counter-puncher,” said Donaire.
Even Pacquiao’s American trainer Freddie Roach is convinced they’ll be up against a champion who is literally coming from 12-straight wins since Roach argued that Ugas’ only defeat in that span to Shawn Porter in 2019 is a controversial one.
“I think Ugas won that bout,” Roach said via a live interview with the US media.
Entering the ring Sunday after almost a two-year layoff, Pacquiao has the heavy excess cum distraction of politics to carry on his back, while Ugas will take the fight not for the money, as he always professed, but for boxing legacy and his country.
“This means the world to me,” said Ugas who fought since he was six years old and left Cuba to become a freeman and a professional world boxing champion.
