On July 2, 2017, eight-division boxing champ Manny Pacquiao was led again to the lion’s den and lost his WBO diadem in a bout that, like his rigged defeat to Timothy Bradley in 2012, was decided by ‘three blind mice,’ or to put it more appropriately, biased judges.
Hyped as the ‘Battle of Brisbane’ for publicity reason, it was not the first event that was named after Queensland’s capital city where the Pacquiao-Jeff Horn confrontation was held.
The original ‘Battle of Brisbane’ was a war-time incident that took place in Australia. For two successive nights, American personnel and Australian servicemen and civilians engaged in a riot on November 26-27, 1942, even though the protagonists were allies.
The 1942 incident was not actually a battle in its strictest sense; rather, it was more of a city invasion where the methods used included injurious protests, looting, and other forms of attacks. The bloody riot ended with one casualty and hundred were reported injured.
The trouble erupted as a result of the stationing of US troops in the territory, which arbitrarily expanded the local population and, by extension, affected the condition of the place.
Accordingly, many of the edifices and structures around Brisbane were taken over by the American. One account reported that the “city was fortified, schools were closed, brownouts enforced, crime increased, and many families sold up and moved inland.”
The ‘Battle of Brisbane’ commenced with a simple case of an intoxicated American private accosted by a US military police (MP) while talking to three Australian and was being asked to present identification. While the US trooper was looking for his ID, the American MP became impatient and arrested the soldier.
One argument led to another, which resulted in the arrival of more US MPs. The Australian servicemen and civilians who were observing the incident rushed to assist their own MP at the scene. Outnumbered, the Americans retreated to a nearby PX store with Private James R. Stein, the U.S. trooper that was accosted. Private Anthony E. O’Sullivan, the American MP, was wounded in the scuffle and carried to safety by his comrades when tempers erupted.
Reports said on the first night an Australian serviceman, Gunner Edward S. Webster, was killed, while eight other people suffered gunshot wounds. The following night, eight U.S. MPs, a serviceman and four American officers were hospitalized from injuries. The Australians won.
In the 2017 ‘Battle of Brisbane,’ Horn, an Australian, won. The judges were unanimous in gifting him the WBO crown, but the veterans of world boxing bouts and the sports analysts of huge media organizations, were almost unanimous in saying the verdict was a farce.
Battles, whether fought inside the sport arena or in actual combat, are viewed differently from various lenses. To seasoned researchers, for instance, the Battle of Leyte is regarded as the greatest naval battle in history. To historiographers, the perspective changes, depending on the elements used in measuring the significance of an event.
The ‘Battle of Manila Bay’, which led to the takeover of the United States of the Philippines, was nothing but a mismatch. But this was not the case of the American writers who magnified the incongruity into a full-blown naval battle when actually there was none.
The farcical details introduced in many accounts about the supposed naval encounter have since been corrected and the event is now given lesser significance.
Locally, the fall of Davao hero Datu Bago to colonial invaders led by Don Jose Oyanguren has also been given the same treatment. Some writers called the ‘Battle of Davao Gulf’ a display of courage for a Pinoy hero; others called it a mismatch between an invading Spanish contingent using steam-powered ships and native fighters armed only with local cannons and indigenous fighting tools.
In the 2017 Brisbane battle, Pacquiao battle an enemy that was determined to use bulk, body, and bravado in bullying the Filipino icon against the ropes. No excuses here, but the tactics used, some of them at the least, did not reflect the sporting rules of a decent game.
But blame should not be on Horn who, the analysts repeatedly mouthed, was ‘the hungrier fighter.’ Boxing, in general, has never been a fair game given the number of dubious decisions that have decorated its walls. In the first Bradley-Pacquiao match, the judges, without compunction, ruled in favor of Timothy even if the street urchin, as an ignorant boxing bystander, knew the American had lost by a mile.
In truth, a commentator was right in saying, boxing is a mafia sport, an athletic event influenced in secret by the wishes of promoters, players, and other underground characters.
In today’s landscape, battles, whether on the ring or in the frontline, are defined by so many parameters and often contradicting definitions. A winning invasion, even it costs more casualties for the aggressor, is won because the goal has been achieved brutally.
For winning the match, Horn should be deprived of the credit to celebrate. For Pacquaio, his loss once again revives the soundness of a thousand and one advices which called on him to wrest on his laurels and, for that matter, retire from any fight anymore.
Satchel Paige, the legendary American Negro league baseball and Major League Baseball (MLB) pitcher, once said: ‘How old would you be if you didn’t know how old you are?’
