Sunday may be Pacquiao vs. Bradley III, but it seems as if there is not much to talk about.
While a fight involving Manny Pacquiao usually equals to ‘national holiday’ in the Philippines, his third match with Timothy Bradley will be something else. One month after the bout with Bradley, Pacquiao’s status as a politician will be on the line, as he guns for one of the 12 seats in the Philippine Senate.
Any promotional material that exceeds the limits set by the Fair Elections Act of the Commission of Elections may lead to a national candidate’s disqualification. Thus, with Pacquiao also running for Senator in this May’s elections, very little promotion was made for the fight here in the Philippines.
COMELEC, on its part, has allowed the fight to be aired here, since they received no formal complaints in relation to his candidacy. Despite that, the only known mention of a blow-by-blow multi-platform coverage is through a series of promotional videos from Solar Sports (see example below) and an announcement made by GMA online.
That said, in order to comply with the Fair Elections Act, neither Solar Sports nor GMA were able to aggressively promote the fight. Instead, they made use of news clips to inform viewers of the two fighters and the event itself.
With so little noise, not to mention Pacquiao’s controversial remarks on the LGBT community in February, the third installment of Pacquiao vs. Bradley is expected to be the least hyped of them all. The expectation that Pacquiao is using the fight just to gain the voters’ confidence may convince them not to watch the fight at all, because it may hurt the chances of other, more deserving candidates.
On Sunday, Pacquiao steps into the ring for perhaps the final time. But the question is, will you watch?
From the Tube 