Manny Pacquiao grabbed the eyes and ears of mainstream sports outlets this week but it’s not in the way Top Rank Promotions would’ve hoped.
Pacquiao’s anti-gay comments created a widespread conversation in the sporting community. Magic Johnson, Orlando Cruz , Floyd Mayweather and others have commented on Pacquiao’s anti-gay sentiments. Those controversial statements led to Pacquiao being dropped by Nike and he stands to lose other endorsements in the coming days.
It all began when Pacquaio said gays were worse than animals.
“It’s common sense. Do you see any animals that go male to male, or female to female? So the animals are even better (than humans),” Pacquiao said with a chuckle. “Because they know how to distinguish from male to male or female to female. Right? Now if we allow male to male or female to female, then that makes us worse than animals.”
He went on to apologize for that statement but a new batch of controversy was drummed up when this anti-gay IG message was found.
Pacquiao’s apologies are falling on deaf ears at this point and people must come to grips with the fact that this is who he is as a man. If you don’t like his stance on gay relationships then you don’t have to support him. Does this sound familiar?
Before Manny Pacquiao’s 2015 fight with Floyd Mayweather many media outlets and personalities called for the boycott of their mega-fight. That was due to Floyd’s history of domestic violence, which is extremely different from Pacquiao’s situation but both inflammatory.
In May it was trendy to ask fans to not support a fighter because of something they did, or believed in, but none of those same sentiments are being shared now. Both issues affect us as Americans but for some reason Floyd caught the brunt of the attack and Manny is receiving a pass.
The statistics imply both acts/beliefs affect the same number of American families.
It’s not hyperbole when it’s said that most families in the United States have been effected by domestic violence.
On average, nearly 20 people per minute are physically abused by an intimate partner in the United States. During one year, this equates to more than 10 million women and men. 1 in 3 women and 1 in 4 men have been victims of [some form of] physical violence by an intimate partner within their lifetime.
The same is said for the number of American families that have someone who associate themselves with the LGBT community.
An estimated 3.5% of adults in the United States identify as lesbian, gay, or bisexual and an estimated 0.3% of adults are transgender. This implies that there are approximately 9 million LGBT Americans, a figure roughly equivalent to the population of New Jersey.
Both subjects hit home for a great deal of Americans and Manny’s stance was deplorable because he suggest that an entire community of people are beneath everyone else due to the way they live their lives. This is the type of institutionalised bigotry that the country fights to get rid of everyday, yet we’ve heard no one stand up and ask for a boycott of Pacuiao’s PPV.
That’s because his PPV isn’t projected to break records. The Manny Pacquiao-Timothy Bradley PPV fight on August 9th will be lucky to do 400 PPV buys and most outlets won’t bother to send more than 1-2 employees to cover the event.
It was popular to ask fans to boycott Floyd Mayweather because these outlets knew how much more he had to lose and how much they stood to gain by drumming up the narrative.
I’m not here to call out my fellow media members by name, they know who they are, but it’s important to shine a light on hypocrisy when it is so blatantly paraded in front of our faces. As media members we can’t champion a cause for personal gain or to piggy-back from someone else’s stardom. If we stand up for the rights of people with a lesser voice then we should make sure to do so whenever the situation arises.
Let’s see if the media that was quick to brow-beat fans for purchasing the PPV last May have the same opinion on April 9th.
