Let’s Leave God Alone When  Pacquiao Collides vs Barrios

By Alex P. Vidal 

“You cannot believe in God until you believe in yourself.” – Swami Vivekananda

WE don’t want a repeat of what we saw 13 years ago when our sports hero, Manny Pacquiao, kissed the canvas and nearly lost his life after collecting a $26-million purse in that WBO tragedy.

On July 19, 2025, the boxing senior citizen, 46, who just failed to reclaim his seat in the Philippine senate, will get a comparatively paltry amount in his 12-round WBC 147-lb bout versus champion Mario Barrios, 30.

But the risk of reenacting the gruesome canvas-kissing scene remains higher since he is supposed to be spending his leisure time in the nursing home instead of the square jungle trying to snatch the WBC welterweight diadem from a younger beak buster.

I was in the ringside together with fellow accredited journalists from the Philippines and other countries in the MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas evening on December 8, 2012 when Juan Manuel Marquez brutally knocked out Manny Pacquiao in the sixth round in their 12-round fourth and final match billed as “Fight of the Decade.”

We saw and heard what happened. We, too, were horrified and momentarily frozen in disbelief.

We were used to watching Pacquiao making a mincemeat of all his Mexican customers from San Antonio to Arlington and back to glitzy La Vegas. Now, he was the one who got decked—horrifically.

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Pacquiao, then 33, fell face first from Marquez’s thunderous right to the mouth. Referee Kenny Bayless did not bother to count as Pacquiao deposited himself on the canvas motionless.

It was a terrifying sight no Filipino present inside the arena with a seating capacity of 17,000 wanted to see.

Many superstitious fans and critics were quick to blame Pacquiao’s transformation from a Catholic faithful to “Born Again” Christian.

“God must’ve punished him,” they eerily surmised.

If true, then God is not just; He is cruel and plays favorites.

Since most of us believe that God is pure love in its most supreme form, He could not have guided Marquez’s lethal right to inflict harm on a faithful follower.

God has laid down from all eternity the law which governs all things, like light from the sun; but He will never change the economy of world boxing for Marquez, who is also a Roman Catholic from Iztacalco, Mexico.

What happened to Pacquiao had also happened to other great marquee names such as Muslim convert Muhammad Ali, Mike Tyson, Lennox Lewis, Roberto Duran, Tomas Hearns, Sugar Ray Leonard, and the late Rev. George Foreman.

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When all these ring titans were felled with one blow in their own high-profile fights, nobody blamed God or their supposed conversion to any faith for the Waterloo.

Ali (56-5, 37 KOs), formerly Cassius Clay, converted from Christian to Muslim after winning the world heavyweight crown from Sonny Liston on February 25, 1964.

As a Muslim, he racked up 10 straight wins before losing by unanimous decision to Joe Frazier for the world heavyweight championship on March 8, 1971 in New York.

In this defeat to Frazier (32-4, 27 KOs), Ali was floored with a single punch and nearly suffered a knockout loss but managed to finish the fight scheduled for 15 rounds.

Nobody blamed his shocking loss to his decision to embrace Allah.

Before he became a pastor, Foreman suffered a humiliating 8th round technical knockout defeat to Muslim Ali on October 30, 1974 in Zaire.

In this epic war dubbed “Rumble in the Jungle,” the Christian God and Allah did not intervene to save their respective “bets.”

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Another Muslim fighter Hasim Rahman (50-9-2, 41 KOs) made headlines all over the globe after scoring a major upset in the heavyweight division with a one-punch knockout win over previously indestructible British Lennox Lewis (41-2, 32 KOs) at the Carnival City, Brakpan, Gauteng, South Africa on April 22, 2001.

Again, nobody credited Allah for Rahman’s extra-ordinary power that night.

Nobody blamed Lewis for missing his “duties and obligations” as Christian Anglican faithful.

The distinction between religion and superstition is fundamental in the fall of Pacquiao.

Voltaire, in his magnificent prayer, once addressed to God in the article “Theist” where he expounded his faith finally and clearly:  “The theist is a man firmly persuaded of the existence of a supreme being as good as he is powerful, who has formed all things; who punishes, without cruelty, all crimes, and recompenses with goodness all virtuous actions…Reunited in the principle with the rest of the universe, he does not join any of the sects which all contradict one another. His religion is the most ancient and the most widespread; for the simple worship of a God preceded all the systems of the world.”

(The author, who is now based in New York City, used to be the editor-in-chief of two leading daily newspapers in Iloilo, Philippines.—Ed)