MANNY PACQUIAO THROUGH WILLIAM HAZLITT’S WORDS
Iris P. Concepcion

“The day was fine, the sky was blue, the mists were retiring from the marshy ground, the path was tolerably dry, the sitting up all night had not done us much harm---at least the cause was good; we talked of this and that with amicable difference, roving and sipping of many subjects, but still invariably we returned to the fight.”

This passage was taken from an essay “The Fight” written in 1821 by the eminent essayist Mr. William Hazlitt. He must have developed calloused hands writing literary discourses such as “On Shakespeare and Milton” and “My First Acquaintance With Poets” while he roved in his scribed themes with critical mastery. Yet, when he sharpened up his remembrance of a boxing bout between Tom “the Gas-man” Hickman and Bill Neate, it set “a standard of excellence for all sports writing since that time“ according to the anthology I lifted it from.

I always tenderly touch this collection of literature pieces (Norton Anthology of English Literature Volume II copyrighted in 1962, bound in the finest onion-skin pages I have ever flipped) ever since I can recall I wanted to fall in love with words and not with the magical frog which, by a loop of fable, hid a glistening crown in its green amphibiality. The book is now halved, particularly slicing Robert Browning’s “Porphyria’s Lover”. It gave up on its own brilliantly punishing weight. Before the verse split, a thread of some unfamiliar variety had hung there like a curtain cord as if expecting to be cut. When I was young, so young that I was unquestionably happy without adult sickness like gloominess, I could not understand the metric cadences of word groupings mastered in this obese book by names inhabiting (to me) the remotest, wintry world like John Keats and Percy Bysshe Shelley. I still could not fathom some of the verses now except for some pulsating lines, separately extracted personally by myself as flawlessly scrawled, brushed up in the neatest gloss so to speak.

Among the copious words leisurely scattered there, I read this essay on boxing by Mr. Hazlitt with kicking fascination. It awakened in me an importance rarely felt for bloodied sports, made peculiar if one considers the time frame I was in : television sets were still in black and white and carved like wooden cabinets. Rodents can build refugee settlements inside the box without getting detected. In rare occasions that I have seen my father genuinely awestruck with celebrities, he was waxing dialogues on Muhammad Ali and Sugar Ray Leonard. RPN-9, when Mr. Harry Gasser, Ms. Ninez Cacho-Olivares and Mr. Phillip Tan were still its news anchors speaking in astonishing accents I just knew were not cultivated from my quaint and quiet town, telecast then a replay of a foreign network’s world of sports program where the “agony of defeat” was visualized by a ski athlete crashing into a banner and rolling horribly. It was through these replays of memorable sports moments that I first watched world-class boxing matches. I thought they were but a mere slugfest with boundaries.

Why am I finely peeling away these details with meticulous attention? To highlight the fact that what started me in developing a whetted observation of fighters who either raised their gloves up in triumph even with eyes shut or flayed down, totally lifeless, was intensified by my reading of Mr. Hazlitt’s essay. Although I winced at the punches thrown as beamed on that black and white t.v. set where gashes were not red but black, no picture can compete with the words of the essayist as he described the mood of the boxing match he watched during that eventful day of December 11, 1821.

Two hundred centuries later, Mr. Hazlitt’s words still boom loudly as I fervently viewed the rematch of Mr. Manny Pacquiao against Mexico’s Mr. Erik Morales. It is in the light of Mr. Hazlitt’s words that I approached the battle between the two from a different angle : How many excellently expressive verse and prose shall be written after this fight? I became Mr. Hazlitt’s feelings and his mood then could never have been more appropriate to my own situation. From “The Fight” :

“The day, as I have said, was fine for a December morning. The grass was wet, and the ground miry, and plowed up with multitudinous feet, except that, within the ring itself, there was a spot of virgin green closed in and unprofaned by vulgar tread, that shone with dazzling brightness in the midday sun. For it was now noon, and we had an hour to wait. This is the trying time. It is then the heart sickens, as you think what the two champions are about, and how short a time will determine their fate (italics mine). After the first blow is struck, there is no opportunity for nervous apprehensions; you are swallowed up in the immediate interest of the scene-----but

Between the acting of a dreadful thing
And the first motion, all the interim is
Like a phantasma or a hideous dream. “
(from Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar)

The heart sickens. While Mr. Hazlitt was for Mr. Bill Neate ancient years ago, I am heartily diseased of dread for Mr. Pacquiao. No unfurling of evolution can change the bop of a heart when you lay all your screams for the victory of one person. The emotional torment is more than staggering. A day previous to the fight , my youngest niece unconsciously chattered during lunch that she and her classmates prayed for Mr. Pacquiao’s victory. Seven to eight year old kids begging for Jesus to calm, soothe and rouse the millions of Filipinos’ sickened hearts.

For me, the day of the fight started with a blessing. It was my father’s 74th birthday had he been alive. Most of the people whom I watched the fight with (pay per view) at a neighbor’s house had either came from Mass or had helped my Kuya in butchering a goat as a birthday remembrance for my father. Our kindly parish priest avoided mentioning the fight during the homily but could not help commenting at the end of the Mass that he was certainly aware of synchronized motions: churhgoers constantly checking their watches, eager to go home. He too, offered his prayers. Kuya and company, meanwhile, must have probably outclocked their previous record in slicing the goat’s meat for kilawen, kaldereta and papaitan to catch the fight unhampered. I made sure to stuff myself with each dish right after it was cooked. I was thinking in advance. If Mr. Pacquiao would lose (I know he will win but I came prepared for any eventuality ), I might as well consider my palate officially dead.

In the essay, Mr. Hazlitt asked : Reader, have you ever seen a fight? That query was important to him since, fancy, which was the slang term for boxing during his time, was not yet countenanced. The location of Mr. Hazlitt’s subject matter had to be kept secret from the authorities. YES, I shall answer him now with hands clamped as opposed to his

“…open carriages were coming up, with streamers flying and music playing, and the country people were pouring in over hedge and ditch in all directions, to see their hero beat or be beaten.”

In my setting, a certain nervous plague had somehow gripped each one, waiting for the first blow. On whom: that is the bodily tension that we all seem to panic into. We all came thirsty for Mr. Pacquiao to beat the pulp out of Mr. Morales. I have romanticized every possible way what that match can remarkably offer. Not for personal glory but as a lurch to anchor a sagging sense of national pride. I wouldn’t know what thoughts sprinted from my companions’ intense concentration but we all had the facial expressions to buoy up this very thrilling strain.

While Mr. Hazlitt talked about carriages, I was slumped in the sofa of good-natured neighbors. They converted their house balcon like a mini-movie house where one of the two television sets was placed. The other one was in the living room where I viewed the battle. I entered it with people already properly sat. Pleasantries were naturally warm but the sickened hearts, no matter how you hide them, will climb and crawl past the jumpy nerves and externally turn up under the busy tangling and untangling of fingers; of the frequent visits to the bathroom; of uneasiness and excuses if their flustered hearts can take a blood-spattered face of Mr. Pacquiao. There were several summons for medical glossaries as the females in the crowd, myself included, entertained the possibility of experiencing heart attacks and/or hypertension.

The build-up was extremely notable. Mr. Hazlitt’s disposition against unmagnanimous statements of a fighter ranked high among his displeasures. Like him, I was unconsciously appalled that Mr. Morales would have expressed the cocky statement that he never remembered any strong blow coming from Mr. Pacquiao. Mr. Morales might have said it to psyche-up the battle into a showdown of scare but here is the more redounding smack as psychologically sized up by Mr. Hazlitt :

“A boxer was bound to beat his man, but not to thrust his fist, either actually or by implication, in everyone’s face. Even a highwayman, in the way of trade, may blow out your brains, but if he uses foul language at the same time, I should say he was no gentleman. A boxer, I would infer, need not be a blackguard or a coxcomb, more than another.”

Mr. Morales might not have uttered invectives but he shoved his boxing amnesia as a rallying point which made him appear ungentlemanly as defined in 18th century boxing. In the reported press conferences when Mr. Pacquiao was made to say something, the latter never took the undermining statement against him, scripted or not, into a blaze of wordswaps. He did not turn into a coxcomb. Instead, he smiled, he waved, he spoke sentences using the native tongue of his opponent and plunged that unexpected trait you thought would never come from a fighter whose soulful purse is to draw blood from an adversary : an attacking humility.

I was therefore slumped in that sofa with more prejudice than ever against Mr. Morales. This added more to my nerviness since I know that a predisposed bias is often a cause of great devastation just like wars. Somewhere in Tijuana, Mexico, a Mexican would have readily debunked me and had felt sickness too, but for Mr. Morales.

I now leave out the sports jargons as I arrange my observation of the fight that I still view as a clash of brawn and brain. I am not an expert of the sport and I do not know if the fighters swayed rightly or wrongly or if they executed their counter punches correctly. Right there in Mr. Hazlitt’s essay, no punch or jab or uppercut or left hook were mentioned either, yet, he was a true aficionado. Proper descriptions to the boxers’ movements were not yet invented to add color to his account but he used characters from the “Iliad” and even “Paradise Lost” to stress out his points. His descriptions were like a playwright’s :

“If Neate was like Ajax, ‘with Atlantean shoulders, fit to bear the pugilistic reputation of all Bristol, Hickman might be compared to Diomed, light, vigorous, elastic, and his back glistened in the sun, as he moved about, like a panther’s hide. There was now a dead pause---attention was awestruck. Who at that moment, big with a great event, did not draw his breath short---did not feel his heart throb? All was ready. They tossed up for the sun and the Gas-man won. They were led up to the scratch---shook hands, and went at it.”

We went at it straight to the soap. When the national anthem of the Philippines was sung, someone unabashedly said, “I feel like crying.” I think not a few brave men would have showed this sentimentality in other publicly watched spectator sports. As I scanned the room, however, I realized that it was not shameful to accept that nationalism had struck in such an intimate way to all and whatever divine mercy that was, it purged us all off from the divide, from the tumults and away from desperation. The mixture of citizenship and self-identification gathered in those reddened, welled-up eyes.

Personally and with emotional rhythm, I have found the portrayal of Diomed through Mr. Pacquiao. He may not be a Greek warrior in physique but he lightly carried himself to the ring with an infectious smile. It nimbly emphasized his pair of arresting eyes that were focused as a jaguar’s. Elastic he was, in white garb, which reminded me of a galloping Ninja Turtle who can conquer any space with speed. He prayed in his corner, seeking heavens for guidance. Contrast this with Mr. Morales’ not so Ajax-like stance. His looks seemed to declare that the heavens had left him. He looked tired. Was it a flicker of my dramatist’s slant that I saw a heavy unhappiness weighing down his face like burdening bricks? His sadness somewhat blurred the television screen. Mr. Pacquiao, on the other hand, radiated. His true grit was burrowed in his heart and without doubt, his verve occupied the whole arena.

“In the first round, everyone thought it was all over. After making play a short time, the Gas-man flew at his adversary like a tiger, struck five blows in as many seconds, three first, and then following him as he staggered back, two more, right and left, and down he fell, a mighty ruin….Neate seemed like a lifeless lump of flesh and bone, round which the Gas-man’s blows played with the rapidity of electricity or lightning, and you imagined he would only be lifted up to be knocked down again. It was as if Hickman held a sword or a fire in that right hand of his, and directed it against an unarmed body. “

The first few rounds, my brain would blot out the longer arm reaches of Mr. Morales that landed on Mr. Pacquiao’s face. My hands by now have grown icy from fear. So, that was how sickened truly mean. The taller boxer, Mr. Morales’ melancholic appearance was by now translating into rapid knocks. During moments when Mr. Pacquiao’s face would seem to rotate halfway, everyone was hushed. I have never seen faces recoiled in pain like my seatmates’. My grimace would have stood out from that parade of pained expressions. One already covered her face with a tee-shirt. We did not sit there to watch Mr. Pacquio suffer and our body movements can attest to that. Yet, when Mr. Pacquiao hit back with forceful and rock solid punches, everyone screamed and thumped as if what was lacking in that communal feast was merely the accompaniment of drum beats.

“They met again, and Neate seemed, not cowed, but particularly cautious. I saw his teeth clenched together and his brows knit close against the sun. He held out both his arms at full length straight before him, like two sledge hammers, and raised his left an inch or two higher. The Gas-man could not get over this guard---they struck mutually and fell, but without advantage on either side. It was the same in the next round; but the balance of power was thus restored---the fate of the battle was suspended. No one could tell how it would end.”

This is where Mr. Hazlitt’s tale could not compare with what I saw. In between rounds, Mr. Morales’ face spoke large volumes of blows pummeled at him. Mr. Pacquiao had hit his body with multiple cannonball fists. When I saw the blood on Mr. Morales’ face (where a bud had rotated like a wheel inside a hole of his nose) and none in Mr. Pacquiao’s, I resolved that was foretelling whose hero shall be crushed in this battle of champions. Mr. Morales shall be gorged slowly like scattered crumbs which, when taken wholly, will satisfy Mr. Pacquiao’s innate hunger.

True enough, Mr. Morales was dazed as Mr. Pacquiao switched the landing pads of his jabs. Inunti-unting kinain si Morales (he slowly munched Morales) from body to head. Mr. Pacquiao received his opponent’s blows but doubled his counterblows. The unraveling of those moments shone best when Mr. Morales, who never remembered any strong punch from Mr. Pacquiao, tasted it from both hands of the latter. This time around, Mr. Pacquiao made sure that Mr. Morales’ memory bank will have those blows etched, engraved, neon-lit and best of all, unforgotten. Mr. Morales swayed, fell semi-fallingly in the ring when the bell rang. In that room and the balcon, something magical was happening too. We stood up, whooped up and yelled. Better still, we clapped as if we were in Las Vegas, Nevada when that particular round ended.

“…in the next, the Gas-man aiming a mortal blow at his adversary’s neck with his right hand, and failing from the length he had to reach, the other returned it with his left at full swing, planted a tremendous blow on his cheekbone and eyebrow, and made a red ruin of that side of his face. The Gas-man went down, and there was another shout---a roar of triumph as the waves of fortune rolled tumultuously from side to side. This was a settler. Hickman got up, and “grinned horrible a ghastly smile” yet he was evidently dashed in his opinion of himself; it was the first time he had ever been so punished; all one side of his face was perfect scarlet, and his right eye was closed in dingy blackness, as he advanced to the fight, less confident, but still determined. “

Can Mr. Pacquiao’s Round 9 display of courage drive itself back in a time capsule and fly back to that Bristol setting, stirring the words of Mr. Hazlitt anew? For Mr. Morales now knew, perfectly knew in fact, that he had been so punished. All of us were aiming that Mr. Pacquiao will go for the kill, pacify all the tremblors felt within us, speak our hopes through his blows, comfort us from that visage of suffering and then, give us the face of triumph, nothing else but triumph, in the face of our own private battles.

“From this time forward the event became more certain every round, and about the twelfth it seemed as if it must have been over. Hickman generally stood with his back to me; but in the scuffle, he had changed positions, and Neate just then made a tremendous lunge at him, and hit him full in the face. It was doubtful whether he would fall backwards or forwards; he hung suspended for a second or two, and then fell back, throwing his hands in the air, and his face lifted up to the sky. I never saw anything more terrific than his aspect just before he fell. All traces of life, of natural expression, were gone from him.”

Could there be anything more gratifying to me than the grasp of a thrill that I shall be spared from Mr. Hazlitt’s hesitancy two hundred centuries ago as to where his hero’s adversary would fall---forwards or backwards? My hero, Mr. Pacquiao lunged a left fist of a whirlpool to Mr. Morales’ face on the 10th round. In a swift second, there was never an uncertainty where his body and possibly his spirit will go. That tremendous impact, to a man already beat in blue from his torso up to where his neck rested, had already been struck in several ways that it must have felt like toothaches attached to gangrened gums were sprouting all over his body, his scientific destination can only be away, away from the one who inflicted upon him the unforgettable punches.

And so Mr. Morales flung like a deflated tossed ball inside that ring. In a highly filmable way of being freezily thrown. Leaning, sloping; it was reminiscent of how Neo of The Matrix would have executed it against his foe. It was dealt with finesse that Mr. Morales was precisely lobbed. The referee had to block Mr. Pacquiao least he would unleash more pain to an already conquered body. The countdown delivery must have sounded like death knell to Mr. Morales.

Mr. Morales beat the countdown and stood up, not lifeless as the Gas-man was described by Mr. Hazlitt, but with unkillable courage. He tried to defy the odds already against him in full circles but just as he mastered this comeback with bravery, only his will rose to the occasion. His body simply gave up. By then, he was pounded like he was wood to Mr. Pacquiao’s axe hands and there, where everyone of us were up on our feet screaming for all the skies to hear, Mr. Morales slumped to his knees the second time like “one of the figures in Dante’s Inferno,” to borrow Mr. Hazlitt’s words.

And what of Mr. Pacquiao’s courage? He showed everyone and I mean everyone that when one does something honorable, the crowd shall come and come they shall, with all their guts, with all their soul. How much more can you ask from a man who invested so much integrity to his profession that he unselfishly worked so hard at it and sacrificed a lot for it ? No shortcuts shall be needed for a man whose intention was never muddled by self-interest. When he said he did it for the Philippines, we believed him because he showed the good deed first, way before the pomp and pageantry. There is your credible fighter who does what he speaks and speaks what he truly does.

My account of the fight as seen from an 18th century essay resonated the universal appeal of being on the side of the triumphant but it is more than that to me. In one spectacular period of my life this year, I would have experienced how the disparate themes of nationalism, fandom and hope were impressively shaped in one man : Mr. Manny Pacquiao.