We had been treated to a special greeting from Little Gallego, a retired Filipino featherweight of modest accomplishment who had been lucky enough to garner the gatekeeper gig at the Elorde Sports Complex when his boxing career was over. Gallego’s childlike pride in his former profession and the relatively humble position in which he found himself were touching in a peculiarly ambivalent way. I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.
In the end, the defensive mechanism of last resort kicked in, and gallows humor prevailed. The incident became an inside joke between Ted Lerner — an American journalist and long-time resident of the Philippines — and me. Whenever stories of Manny Pacquiao’s spendthrift ways made headlines, one of us inevitably joked that he would soon be replacing Little Gallego at the gate of the Elorde compound.
Although it’s highly unlikely (but not totally inconceivable) that Pacquiao could end up in anything like Gallego’s circumstances, the multimillionaire boxer does appear to be racing headlong toward his own financial cliff.
Such a grim possibility is in stark contrast to the situation enjoyed by Floyd Mayweather Jr. Although we will never know for sure who would have won if Manny and Floyd had fought during their primes, at this point Mayweather is making more money than ever — and hasn’t needed Pacquiao to make it happen. Meanwhile, Manny is spending at a Tyson-esque rate.