De La Hoya, Pacquiao to stage ‘beauties and the beasts’
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And this is sports reporting?
Popular Spanish-language radio personality Piolin was on the dais and actor-comedian George Lopez served as master of ceremonies Tuesday when the Oscar De La Hoya-Manny Pacquiao cross-country press tour closed in East Los Angeles.
As expected, plenty of laughs were had.
Bob Arum, Pacquiao’s promoter and De La Hoya’s former promoter, added fuel to the fire by announcing a unique beauty contest hooked to the event.
Arum, who apparently has long insisted to confidants that the most beautiful Filipino women are more attractive than females of any other ethnicity, said a panel of judges will select ‘four Filipinas and four Latinas’ from a field of entrants that will ultimately gather in Las Vegas before the Dec. 6 bout. One champion will emerge from the Elite Eight.
(Details about the contest will be announced shortly, officials say.)
Lopez, who had already swigged from a bottle of a fight-sponsoring tequila company, responded to Arum’s contest idea by announcing application forms were available at a liquor store down the street and at a derogatory fake Spanish-language website that a Golden Boy Promotions spokesman tried to clean up in English as ‘crazyoldman.com.’
The beauty pageant brought back recollections of a 1974 ‘poster girl’ bikini contest that promoters created for the Muhammad Ali-George Foreman fight in Africa. Longtime Arum publicist Bill Caplan, who served as a judge, selected a woman, Veronica Porsche, who ended up marrying Ali and having the champ’s most famous child, Laila Ali. Caplan said Foreman also married one of the poster girls.
Asked if he expects the newest contest to become a bikini event, Caplan said, ‘I’m sure it will. You’re not going to see them in ballroom gowns.’
Lopez plainly has his money on a Latina winning, claiming they are the world’s most beautiful women. ‘We wouldn’t get married five times if they weren’t,’ he cracked.
Piolin then took the microphone and told Pacquiao he would certainly lose, making a throat-slashing gesture across his throat.
‘Hey, Piolin, after this, we’ll take you to Glendale for you to say the same thing,’ Arum said. ‘Because everybody, 90 million Filipinos at their home and 9 million more in this country and around the world, are marching in lockstep with Manny Pacquiao.’
Nevertheless, Tuesday was De La Hoya’s to cherish, and he informed his hometown fans that they had two hours to scoop up free tacos at a nearby King Taco stand.
‘Say you’re with me,’ De La Hoya told the masses.
‘Can I go there?’ asked Pacquiao.
-- Lance Pugmire
