By Ronnie Nathanielsz
The "Living Legend" of Philippines basketball, former senator Robert Jaworski, has come out strongly in support of eight division world boxing champion Manny Pacquiao in the face of attacks against him by the LGBT community following Pacquiao's remarks condemning same-sex marriages.
Jaworski told us he had sent a short message to Manny and expressed the hope that he would read it.
Jaworski, who listened to this reporter defending Pacquiao on ANC, said he was in total agreement with our position and remarked, “how can you go wrong when you are speaking about God and his teachings.”
He said Pacquiao “has the overwhelming support of the silent majority” and described the LGBT groups as “unfortunately callous with their venomous comments” prompting the basketball great to tell us, “I feel sorry for Manny.”
Jaworski reasoned that “I am not a candidate (in the forthcoming elections) and could slug it out” with these groups attacking Pacquiao.
He said we “must not let them impose on us. They confuse humanity “ and posed the question “how can you sleep together if you are both males. They don’t give birth so how can they multiply?”
Jaworski condemned men kissing men and women kissing women in public and demanded that “they don’t do this in front of our children.”
The charismatic former pro-basketball superstar’s comments were made a couple of days after the first openly gay player during his last days in the NBA, Jason Collins took to Twitter to state, “Manny Pacquiao I lost all respect t for you. Bigoted people like you (and yes you are one) should never hold an office in politics.”
In the meantime, Floyd Mayweather Jr’s strength and conditioning coach Alex Ariza - who previously worked with Pacquiao - blasted Top Rank promoter Bob Arum for stating that Pacquiao’s comments on homosexuals and same-sex marriages was “reprehensible” and pointed out that to Arum - "Hollywood and Los Angeles friends are more important than Manny and the Filipinos.”
He said “I get it” in reference to what Pacquiao had to say and made it clear “we all have our beliefs” and emphasized that Pacquiao he didn’t mean it (his statements) the way it came out to be. Its just his religious beliefs “ although he conceded that Pacquiao “sometimes doesn’t articulate things well but that’s the honesty in him.”
Ariza stressed “there’s no loyalty with Arum. He'll do anything to separate himself and Top Rank from Manny, now. He doesn’t want the backlash because its always money to Arum.”
He said “you are supposed to protect your fighter but he knows Manny is on his way out so he wants to separate. It's so sad ”