The International Committee of the Red Cross announced Wednesday that it has deployed volunteers to the Philippines to help rebuild the suddenly beleaguered nation. Widespread devastation wrought by the controversial split decision awarded to Timothy Bradley over national hero Manny Pacquiao on Saturday night in Las Vegas has left the country in ruins and in “desperate need of humanitarian aid,” Red Cross officials declared.
According to multiple reports, two have died and hundreds have been hospitalized for shock and post traumatic stress disorder throughout the Philippines in the wake of the disaster.
Aid workers claim these numbers should be considered “conservative estimates” and would be much higher if not for “thousands” of undiagnosed cases throughout the nation.
“This is just the tip of the iceberg,” Red Cross volunteer Sandy Mandelberg said. “The aftershock of this catastrophe will resonate for months, if not longer.”
Benigno Aquino III, President of the Philippines, urged his citizens to remain strong in the face of adversity.
“The Filipino people are renowned for our resiliency,” President Aquino said in a special address to his people on Monday. “Now, more than ever, we will call upon our resolve and our determination to overcome this latest, most formidable obstacle.”
President Aquino also declared June 9 “Buktot Bradley Day,” a national day of mourning in remembrance of the victims of Pacquiao-Bradley or “Buktot Bradley,” as it has come to be known.
Bernardo Bautista, a contributor to numerous Filipino boxing blogs and a fixture on Pacland, suffered a massive coronary minutes after the Pacquiao loss was announced. Bautista, the first reported fatality, was composing a vicious hyperbolic diatribe denouncing the judges, the fight’s promoter, boxing as a whole and Tim Bradley when he suffered sudden cardiac arrest and died midsentence.
Bautista’s final words are now known throughout the Philippines as the Manipesto and have been adopted as both a rallying cry and elegiac prayer by the mournful victims.
The second known fatality from Buktot Bradley was devoted Pacquiao fan Stillman Santos, who died when his head spontaneously exploded after confirming that he had not hallucinated the announcement of the decision.
Even experienced Red Cross workers like Mandelberg were humbled by the enormity of the damage.
“I haven’t seen a sports-related tragedy like this since I was deployed in Moscow after the ’80 Olympics,” Mandelberg said, steeling himself to console the long line of grieving families wailing outside his Red Cross tent.
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