Netizens Ask Nike To Drop Pacquiao as Endorser for Opposing Gay Marriage

Eight Division World Boxing Champion Manny Pacquiao's opposition to gay marriage may hit him where it may hurt a little and it's not in a place below the belt.

Netizens are signing a petition initiated by Gay Marriage USA via Change.org, which asks Nike to "say 'no' to hate speech" by withdrawing its sponsorship of Pacquiao whom the brand has supported since 2008.

"Following [U.S. President Barack] Obama's recent announcement of support for marriage equality, Pacquiao quoted Bible excerpts to state that homosexuals should be put to death: If a man lies with a man as one lies with a woman, both of them have done what is detestable. They must be put to death; their blood will be on their own heads," the petition read. 

Pacquiao was initially quoted as saying marriage "should not be of the same sex so as to adulterate the altar of matrimony, like in the days of Sodom and Gomorrah of Old."

But in a report on Abs-cbnnews.com, Pacquiao said he is against same-sex marriage but not against gays. 

He also denied citing Leviticus 20:13, which says: "If a man lies with a man as one lies with a woman, both of them have done what is detestable. They must be put to death; their blood will be on their own heads."

This isn't the first time that Pacquiao figured prominently in a negative way online, a couple of months back he got into a row with followers on Twitter which, if I remember correctly, had to do with his opposition to the RH Bill -- another cause supported by the Philippine gay community.

In any case, my view on the whole matter is basically that our job as Christians is not the judge each other but to love each other.  Each must account for his or her own action and square up with The Creator on his own accord.

Sen. Koko Pimentel Probes the Real Brutality of Boxing

Friends over at Get Real Philippine Community will probably wince when they read this, but I am a Manny Pacquiao Fan.  

Every time Manny wins, there's a little Flip in my that thumps his chest and shouts "Proud to be  Pinoy!"

But, after learning about the struggles and outright brutality scores of unknown Filipino boxers face outside the ring, I think my inner Flip Manny Pacquiao fan will have to sober up a bit.

The Plight of Unknown Filipino Boxers

You see, while millions of Filipinos cheer Manny Pacquiao on, there are hundreds of other unknown Filipino boxers slugging away and trying to eke out a living from the sport.

Unknown Filipino boxers who have not earned the stature of Pacquiao engage in fighting bouts for paltry sums of prize money which they have to split with their manager (at a hefty 50-50 or in some cases, with just 40 percent going to the boxer).  Those who already have earned rank are paid about P1,000 per round whether they win or lose in a fight -- which is a tough way to make a living.

One story that was told to me by a former boxer who is now a boxing trainer at a gym is that, despite all the gear they have on, boxers always go down the ring suffering bruises and cuts.  They are seldom given medical attention after fights and they are usually left to their own devices as far as getting some sort of medical treatment is concerned.

The boxing trainer I spoke to even says that some boxers who get knocked out even go home riding a jeep. No stay at the hospital, no post fight medical examination of any sort.

Now, not being treated for fight injuries is one thing.  Getting stiffed by either your promoter or manager is another thing.

One former fighter says he was offered a fight in Japan in 2002 and the papers he signed in the Philippines stated his opponent would be 112 pounds.  When he arrived in Japan, he was surprised to find out that his opponent was 122 pounds and he was clearly outmatched.  Despite being somewhat duped, he decided to throw care to the wind (or in tagalog, 'bahala na!') and push through with the fight.  He claims to have busted his opponent's right eyebrow open and this caused the referee to stop the fight.  But for some reason, the promoter prevailed upon the referee to continue the fight and just as the unknown Filipno boxer was scoring 10s from all the judges, a towel from his corner flew into the ring.  Someone in his corner stopped the fight.

The thing is, he was flown to Japan and when he got there, there were no officials from our country to certify that the fight was legit.  He didn't have anyone in his corner looking out for him and he was cheated out of a sure victory.

But despite "losing", he was at least paid for his performance -- which was a bit of a consolation.

He was lucky he didn't end up like Lito Sisnorio:

Angelito "Lito" Sisnorio Jr. (October 10, 1982 - April 1, 2007) was a Filipino World Boxing Council youth flyweight champion boxer who died following a controversial boxing match in Thailand in April 2007. The controversy over the match arose from the fact that Sisnorio's role in the fight was not officially sanctioned by the Philippine Games and Amusement Board. 

He reportedly sustained brain injuries during the fight on March 31, 2007, which he lost by knockout to Thai boxer Chatchai Sasakul. Following unsuccessful brain surgery, he was pronounced dead at Piyamin Hospital in Thailand at 9:15 PM, April 1, 2007. 

His death prompted the Philippine Games and Amusement Board to ban all fights involving Filipino boxers in Thailand starting April 2007

Dying for the sport

Getting stiffed by a promoter or manager is one thing, but becoming a stiff or dying from boxing related injuries is probably the worst thing that can happen to a boxer.

Just this year, Filipino Flyweight Karlo Maquinto died after sustaining head injuries in a fight.

Here's a snippet of a news article on Maquinto's death:

The right-hander, fighting only his ninth bout as a professional boxer, was taken to hospital last Saturday after rallying from two early knockdowns to salvage a majority draw against fellow Filipino Mark Joseph Costa. 

Maquinto, 8-0-1 with six wins by knockout, collapsed after the four-round bout in northern Manila. 

Rhoby Orata, another member of the hospital medical staff, told ABS-CBN television in an interview that Maquinto was diagnosed with brain swelling, with a blood clot also detected at the right side of his brain. 

“From the start Karlo’s prognosis was not good,” Orata added.

A while back, there was the story of Z Gorres who nearly bought the farm but recovered from brain-swelling.

Moving the Create the Philippine Boxing Council

I first became aware of a move the create the Philippine Boxing Council through a status update posted on Sen. Koko Pimentel's Fanpage on Facebook.

The short update reads:

Born out of last Thursday's hearing of the committee on games and sports, boxing great and Sarangani representative Congressman Pacquiao and I agreed to push for the creation of the Philippine Boxing Commission (PBC).  

The PBC will take care of all details about boxing to benefit all stake-holders most especially the boxers who we all want to have long productive careers and from whose ranks we also hope to produce the next Manny Pacquiao. 

Boxing is the best chance for our country's 1st Olympic gold medal and more worldwide sports glory for our county. By creating the PBC, this will ensure that we will produce more Pacmans and protect the well-being of our Pinoy boxers.

The senator has yet to file the Senate version of the proposed Philippine Boxing Council but there is strong support for the idea of an official body that will look after the welfare of Filipino boxers.

At an informal consultation meeting with boxers and boxing trainers at Elorde's Gym in Ortigas, former boxers and 4 current boxing champions took advantage of the opportunity to tell Pimentel about some of their concerns.

All the boxers approved of the creation of a Philippine Boxing Council, saying that they really needed government agency that focused on assuring the welfare of those who engage in boxing as a professional sport.

Pasig River Run and the fight against plastic pollution

The Pasig River Run is afoot as I write this blog and I am wondering if this much advertised 'awareness generating' as well as 'fund generating' running event will really do anything for the Pasig River.

To really clean up the Pasig River, you have to be aware of what really makes it dirty and you don't have to pay money to run around the city to find out.

Go to your bathroom and kitchen sink.  All the waste water you create ends up in the Pasig River. (Well, yeah, first it goes to your septic tank and then that septic tank basically drains into the sewerage.)  What's worse is that most companies dump their waste water and other pollutants directly into the Pasig River.

Go to your garbage bins.  We can only hope that all the plastic packaging that comes with the goods that you buy ends up in the landfills outside of the city, where presumably, it will rot away and return to the earth.   

The proliferation of so-called 'bio-degradable' plastic bags and recyclable plastic packaging is misleading people into thinking that these plastics will disappear in a poof of smoke after a few weeks.  It won't.  Plastics are FOREVER.  

And the WORST NEWS SO FAR is that hundreds of tons of NON-RECYCLABLE PLASTIC SACHETS are being churned out by companies like UNILEVER, SAN MIGUEL, PROCTER and GAMBLE, NESTLE, and other companies.

The thing is, will Gina Lopez (the head of the Pasig River Rehabilitation Council) tell these TOP PLASTIC POLLUTERS to switch to REAL bio-degradable plastic packaging?

These TOP PLASTIC POLLUTERS happen to be the TOP ADVERTISING SPENDERS of ABS-CBN and the CORPORATE PARTNERS OF PRRC.

Just consider these rough estimations of how much plastic is generated by the TOP ADVERTISERS OF ABS-CBN:

Estimated impact of Plastics Pollution:

http://ecowastecoalition.blogspot.com/2010/05/public-urged-to-eliminate-plastic-waste.html

A discards survey in 2006 involving EcoWaste Coalition and Greenpeace volunteers shows that synthetic plastic materials constitute 76 percent of the floating trash items in Manila Bay, with plastic bags comprising 51 percent; sachets and junk food wrappers, 19 percent; Styrofoam containers, five percent; and hard plastics, one percent. The rest of the rubbish found in Manila Bay consisted of rubber (10 percent) and biodegradable discards (13 percent).

Another study published in 2009 by the US-based Ocean Conservancy revealed that 679,957 of over 1.2 million pieces of marine litter of various types that were gathered in seaside areas during the 2008 International Coastal Clean Up Day in the country were plastic bags.

 

http://pinoybiz.blogspot.com/2010/08/tax-to-curb-plastic-sachets-and-plastic.html

Giant consumer goods manufacturer Unilever claims that every day, it sells 160 million products. Assuming that the sales volume of the other manufacturing giants, Procter & Gamble and Nestle is in the vicinity of Unilever’s, that would be some 500 million products sold daily.

Let’s peg a conservative estimate that 10 percent of all products sold are in plastic sachets, then that’s 50 million. That’s 50 million plastic sachets and pouches that will eventually find its way to our oceans, waterways, landfills and drainage systems ready to clog the free flow of water and trigger floods or kill marine wildlife.

But it is really reasonable to think that of the 500 million products sold daily by the three giants, only 10 percent of are in tiny plastic sachets?

http://pasigriveravenger.wordpress.com/2010/08/14/saw-dingdong-dantes-and-angel-locsin-endorse-a-product-then-picture-this-people/

According to Unilever’s vice president for corporate planning Chito Macapagal, 70% of Unilever Philippines 2007 sales is from the sachet market. That’s 70% of 30 billion pesos, or 21 billion pesos three years ago. That’s nine zeroes following 21. The company was enjoying double digit growth rate from the previous year, so expect that by now those numbers are now not just big, but big big.

Can you picture how many sachets 21 billion pesos’ worth of Unilever products are? Well, let’s see. Which brands of theirs have sachet variants? Sunsilk, Creamsilk, Rexona, Clear, Knorr, Lady’s Choice, Close-Up, Best Foods, and Vaseline come to mind.

Moving on, 21 billion pesos in sachets, if say, the average price for any given sachet were 20 pesos conservatively (I say conservatively because first, most of those mentioned cost less than 20 pesos, and second, 21 billion pesos in Unilever’s sales is at supplier-to-distributor prices, would be equivalent to 1,050 million sachets.

If 1,050 million sachets were sold, then the waste would be 1,050 million multiplied twice to include front and back of the sachet, times 3 inches by 4 inches (I took an estimate of a Clear shampoo sachet), which equals 25,200 million square inches. This is the equivalent of about 16.26 square kilometers worth of sachet or wrapper material. Now, before you do take the initiative to shoot me for driving you nuts with numbers, picture this: 16.26 square kilometers of sachet is enough to cover all of Ilog Pasig.

What got the most screams during the Pacquiao-Hatton fight?

The incessant government TV ads that appeared anywhere they could plug it, from start to finish. And I am given to wondering if the money spent for these TV ads were sourced from government funds and if so, could it be a case for the gross misuse of public funds.

Here in Manila, I started watching the run-up to the Manny Pacquiao-Ricky Hatton on Solar Sports (channel 35 on Destiny) and around 1:00 PM started watching it on GMA7 because my wife had been tipped off that it was at least 30 minutes ahead.

I caught Martin Nievera singing a pop rendition of the Philippine National Anthem, which I thought was actually pretty cool except for the fact that it looked like it was lip-synched. If it was indeed lip-synched, it was probably to avoid the boo-boos of two previous fights where the singer's voice cracked on the final line of the song.

Facebook friends, namely Jojo Terrencio (whom I knew from my Malacanang days), registered their indignation over the rendition of the National Anthem as it apparently didn't match the specifications of the Heraldic Code.

Anyway, putting that aside, I had to contend with a gazillion TV commercial interruptions. The commercials that caught my eye and really annoyed the heck out of me were government sponsored TV ads. It seemed that the entire Arroyo administration was doing a full court press in a propaganda war.

There was President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo with her TV ad saying that GDP continues to rise (a lie); then there was Tesda Director General Bobby Syjuco with his pitch for technical skills education; Finance Secretary Gary Teves and BIR Commissioner Escquivas telling everyone to pay their taxes or something; and Defense Secretary Gilbert Teodoro giving a pitch for disaster preparedness by turning his last name into an acronym for thing you have to do to be disaster ready.

I've been hearing that Syjuco, Teves, and Teodoro are all running for public office in 2010. From a PR and Advertising perspective, you could see that these ads were placed not so much for vote conversion but for awareness. Perhaps, it was also an attempt to associate the personalities involved with Pacquiao's anticipated victory.

Status updates on Facebook said that the Teodoro TV ads got booed in movie theaters that were showing the pay-per-view fight.

What really got me seething was Pagcor Chairman Efraim C. Genuino's ad asking people to support the fight against drugs. And it is the height of irony and lack of circumspection to say that Pagcor is fighting drug addiction when THERE ARE MILLIONS MORE WHO ARE ADDICTED TO GAMBLING!

Pagcor, being the chief regulating agency for all casinos and gambling joints, has either made gambling addicts of millions of Filipinos or continues to fuel their addiction.

And what is this that I hear that Genuino is salivating over a P 6 Billion contract for cancer detection equipment? The supplier is actually offering a 10 percent "commission" or P 600 Million to anyone who can get President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo to sign an order to get Pagcor to fund the project.

Anyway, there's really no mystery as to why or how the government got choice TV ad spots in the broadcast of Pacquiao fight.

The owner of Solar is Wilson Tieng whose company has virtually bought RPN9 (a sequestered TV station) and whose son Irwin is a congressman of the BUHAY PARTY LIST. If that isn't a favored status, I wouldn't know what to call it.

Anyway, GMA7 got flak for the annoying commercial load and in a report in Inquirer dot net:

But according to GMA 7 insiders, not a single centavo of ad revenue from the fight went to the network.

GMA 7’s partnership with Solar Entertainment, which holds broadcast rights to Pacquiao’s bouts, is a “blocktime deal,” said network officials, who declined to be named for lack of clearance to speak on the matter.

Bigger than De La Hoya fight

“That means that all advertising revenues go to Solar Entertainment. GMA 7 only gets a fixed amount, commensurate with the air time bought by Solar,” said one of the officials.

A Solar executive confirmed that ads from the Pacquiao-Hatton mainer, as well as from the undercards, delivered the biggest payday ever for the company, which has a lock on the Philippine broadcast rights for the Pacman’s fights up to 2011.

Jude Turcuato, Solar Sports vice president for sales and marketing, said Sunday’s blockbuster duel was bigger than the Pacquiao-Oscar De La Hoya showdown held five months ago.

“It’s not big percentage-wise but we’re coming from an already big base, the De La Hoya fight. The bottom line is this is the biggest,” said Turcuato.

He declined to give exact figures, but said the company definitely made more than P100 million on Sunday.

But one thing that is really going wrong with GMA7 is that nothing is restraining it from overloading any of its programs with commercials:

Not covered by ad cap
“The lower packages were considered sponsorships only,” the source said. “Companies that availed themselves of P10-P15-million packages were called co-presenters or presenters.”

A broadcast industry insider noted that by partnering with GMA 7, Solar could put in as many commercials as it wanted since the Kapuso network was not covered by the ad cap imposed by the Kapisanan ng mga Brodkaster ng Pilipinas (KBP). (See “In the Know”)

Unlike its main rival ABS-CBN, GMA 7 is not a member of the KBP.

So, how much did the government fork out to Wilson Tieng?

Video highlights of Manny Pacquiao-Ricky Hatton fight!

If for some reason you didn't get to see Manny Pacquiao demolish Ricky Hatton in two rounds, I am posting video highlights of the historic boxing match.

Pacquiao wins vs Hatton! You know!!!!

Manny Pacquiao's weaker right felled British Champ Ricky Hatton in the first round. In the second round, Pacquiao introduced his left to Hatton's jaw and it was lights out for him.

It was GREAT!!

But unfortunately, it seems the Philippine government bought a lot of TV ad spots and we had to see the ugly faces of some of our politicians.

Gloria Macapagal Arroyo with her TV ad saying that GDP continues to rise (a lie), Tesda Director General Bobby Syjuco with his pitch for technical skills education, Finance Secretary Gary Teves and BIR Commissioner Escquivas telling everyone to pay their taxes or something, and Defense Secretary Gilbert Teodoro giving a pitch for disaster preparedness.

I mean, come on! Do you think that by parading their ugly faces, everyone will associate them with Manny Pacquiao's victory? Eh?!

Although, among the commercials, I was intrigued by Ako Mismo. I wonder what that is all about. Hmmmmm!