It's All about Passion

I got so mad reading the article about Arroyo and her 59 marauders that I archived the article about Mike Arroyo and boxing and all that spending he does in Las Vegas during Pacquiao’s fights. Then it led me to thinking about boxing. I hate boxing with a passion.

Well, let me clarify myself here. In my apartment in Cebu I have a pink (yes, pink) Everlast boxing gloves and whenever I am there I go to ALA gym at BTC. I go there to practice the “moves” regardless that my personal trainer told me one time, “Ma’m, just go home and rest.” (before we even started) It was his subtle way of saying I was too old and brittle for the “moves” I should find another form of exercise.

I have an aversion to watching people hurt each other. I do not understand why people think it’s cool to watch someone bleeding and or have swollen eyes like the Tarsier monkey. But if you are one of those people who pays a lot of money to watch boxers on the ring, go ahead, whatever floats your boat.
So I ask myself what passion drives a man to hurt another person? Or get hurt themselves? Could it be the smell of the prize money? Or could it be the smell of blood?

In whatever we do, we have to have passion for it or there’s no meaning besides being paid to do it. Passion makes it worth doing; passion makes it worth starving for or dying for. It is what makes a job well done.
Take Arnel Pineda for instance, (I swear I did not want to write about him anymore) watch every performance he has that is available on YouTube. Not one of those videos showed that he was “just doing a job.”


On June 21 2007 it was past midnight, Arnel was in that cramped platform in some obscure bar in Olongapo singing without a hint that in 7 days Neal Schon would call him and in 8 months to the day on February 21,2008 he would be performing before 25 million Chileans-- live and TV audiences. Whether he was performing for pesos for 10 sleepy beer-powered Filipinos or performing for dollars for 10 thousand Monster powered Americans, Arnel performed just the same. He gave it his all.

I am reminded of the answer of Joe DiMaggio, the New York Yankees baseball player when a reporter once asked him how he managed to play so well and consistently. He said, “I always thought that there was at least one person in the stands who had never seen me play and I didn’t want to let him down.”

I think Arnel consistently performs his best because that is who he is. That is My Arnel. That is why Eden in Houston and Nanette in Canada says: He is my obsession; he is what turns me on. He is what floats my old and brittle boat.