Ricah Trinidad, Hermie Rivera asked me to sue Freddie Roach

“I'm not afraid of death; I just don't want to be there when it happens.”

―Woody Allen

 

By Alex P. Vidal

 

I MET the late sports journalist and columnist Ricardo “Recah” Trinidad for the first time in Las Vegas on December 3, 2008.

It started with a call I received from then 65-year-old Philippine sports journalism icon while I was inside the hotel room intended for accredited reporters covering the Manny Pacquiao vs Oscar De La Hoya 12-round welterweight tussle dubbed “Dream Match” at the MGM Grand on December 6, 2008.

“Hello? Is this Alex? Alex Vidal? Si Ricah ito. Ricah Trinidad of Daily Inquirer,” the caller enthused. “Sabi ni Hermie (Rivera) ikaw daw ang may hawak ng susi sa room.” (Hermie said you’re the one in charge of the room key.)

“Yes, sir. This is Alex Vidal. Where are you po?” I answered.

“Nandito ako sa lobby (of the MGM Grand). May bakante pa ba diyan? Sa floor lang ako matutulog, don’t worry,” Trinidad added. (I’m here in the lobby. Is there a space for me inside the room? I’ll sleep on the floor, don’t worry.)

When Trinidad went upstairs, I offered him the bed, a custom 14-inch pillow-top hybrid mattress. “No. Dito lang ako sa floor. Marami na kayo at late ako eh,” the veteran Filipino sports columnist insisted.

“Ako na lang sa floor,” I asserted. “Nakakahiya po sa inyo.”

 

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Trinidad refused, insisting he was “comfortable” on the floor.

Even if Hermie Rivera, then 69, a San Francisco-based boxing analyst and manager of former WBA bantamweight king Luisito Espinosa, followed upstairs and goaded him to occupy the bed, Trinidad stood his ground: he belonged on the floor, the veteran writer asserted.

Trinidad, who earlier wrote critical stories about Pacquiao, probably knew he was outside the kulambo, so to speak.

He felt Team Pacquiao wouldn’t accommodate him in the MGM Grand thus he asked for his kumpare Rivera’s “intercession” to join us in the room. Nobody from Team Pacquiao said Trinidad wasn’t allowed to join us.

How did I become a key holder? Two days earlier (December 1, 2008), Team Pacquiao arrived in a caravan in the glitzy Nevada city shortly after 9 o’clock in the evening after a four-hour drive from Los Angeles.

After dinner inside Pacquiao’s MGM Grand suite, the then 29-year-old eight-time world champion distributed more than a dozen room key cards, valid for a week, to members of the caravan, including the accredited sportswriters from the Philippines.

Pacquiao handed to me the room key cards for the “photographers” (that’s how he called press people who accompanied his team then). The room was for three other sports writers from the Philippine Daily Inquirer, Manila Bulletin, Philippine Star, and yours truly.

Rivera, who had difficult time to join us, stayed with us, nevertheless.

Meanwhile, while inside the hotel room, Trinidad and Rivera discussed the incident where Freddie Roach, Pacquiao’s famed trainer, scolded and pushed me over an article I wrote when he saw me outside the elevators of the MGM Grand on July 25, 2008, or five months earlier.

 

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The incident between me and Roach happened a day before the 12-round WBA welterweight title duel between Antonio Margarito and Miguel Angel Cotto at the MGM Grand on July 26, 2008. I was accredited to cover the event.

Both Trinidad and Rivera had contacted Gregorio “Sheriff” Asuncion, Pacquiao’s former bodyguard, in Covina, California to refer the incident involving me and Roach to a lawyer in Los Angeles.

Asuncion, then 51, had earlier filed an unlimited civil case suit before the Superior Court of Los Angeles against Roach for allegedly mauling Asuncion inside Roach’s owned Wildcard Boxing Gym in Hollywood, Los Angeles on October 20, 2008.

I learned about the incident involving Roach and Asuncion from Texas-based pediatrician Allan Recto, who called me to relay the news when I was in Iloilo City in the Philippines sometime in November 2008.

Meanwhile, lawyer Robert H. McNeill, Jr. of Ivie, McNeill & Wyatt, an LA-based law firm, contacted me while I was on a train in San Diego, California sometime in June 2009. And the rest was history.

Rivera died on January 15, 2016 at 77, while McNeill Jr. died in April 2016 at 75.

Trinidad, on the other hand, died on September 13, or two years after the death of his sports journalist son Chino. He was 83.

 (The author, who is now based in New York City, used to be the editor-in-chief of two leading daily newspapers in Iloilo, Philippines.—Ed)

 

 

Defeat is an orphan: A lesson for ‘King Martin’

“Anyone can deal with victory. Only the mighty can bear defeat.”

―Adolf Hitler

 

By Alex P. Vidal

 

FORMER Iloilo City councilor Dr. Nielex “Lex” Tupas once put it succinctly: “Naagyan man namon ang sitwasyon nga gina talikdan na kami sang mga tawo mo.” (We have been in situations where people turned their backs on us.)

This reportedly happened when the Tupases were “no longer in power,” or when one of them didn’t win a major elected position in the province of Iloilo and many people thought they were finished politically.

It turned out it was a temporary setback, so to speak, and the family may have regained those fair-weather political backers and nitpickers when the Tupases were back on the hustings and subsequently in power.

Arrested-but-is-now-staying-in-the-hospital plunder accused, former Speaker and Leyte Rep. Ferdinand Martin Romualdez, may be in a similar situation right now as experienced by the Tupases based on Lex’s recollection.

However, the first cousin of President Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. may have been badly damaged politically and morally.

 

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Now that he is facing a non-bailable P7.44-billion plunder case, along with related charges of graft, bribery, and money laundering tied to an alleged flood control and government infrastructure kickback scheme, we doubt if Romualdez can win back his political allies who have started to vanish.

We doubt if King Martin can still win in another election assuming he will be exonerated and allowed to run again.

Following the failed Bay of Pigs invasion, United States President John F. Kennedy used the phrase "victory has a hundred fathers, and defeat is an orphan" during a press conference on April 21, 1961.

It came to mean that many people eagerly claim credit for success, but nobody takes responsibility for failure.

When he didn’t yet resign as House speaker and wasn’t yet charged with plunder, fellow congresspeople were in mad scramble to ingratiate themselves with Romualdez.

They adored King Martin, including his influence and, perhaps, (unexplained) wealth, like a demigod. Ille est princeps dilectus or he is a beloved prince.

What King Martin wanted from the subservient and obsequious House colleagues, he got—including the imprimatur to sign the original impeachment case against Vice President Sara Duterte-Carpio.

 

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Now that Malacanang has thrown him under the bus, King Martin’s life suddenly turned upside down in catatonic asphyxiation.

Beelines from the furtive and shifty House of Representatives colleagues are gone.

The kowtowing horde did not even bother to visit King Martin in his bed at the Cardinal Santos Medical Center in San Juan City, where he was rushed September 7 afternoon after “suffering” a cardiovascular event, unstable blood pressure, and an anxiety attack.

Sooner or later, he will be transferred anyway to the Payatas jail, or the New Quezon City Jail Male Dormitory in Quezon City, where many people believe, King Martin rightly belongs.

And the rest is now history. King Martin’s downfall has turned him into a political orphan.

Meanwhile, when Lex’s father, the late Niel Tupas, Sr. became the 30th governor of Iloilo from June 30, 2001–June 30, 2010, the family regained the support of some of those who abandoned them.

Lex’s mother, the late Myrna Causing-Tupas was also former mayor of Barotac Viejo, Iloilo, the position now held by his older brother, Nielo “Bongbong” Tupas.

Lex’s other older brothers, Niel “Junjun” Tupas, Jr. and Raul “Boboy” Tupas, were also former representatives in the fifth district of Iloilo.

 Another older brother, Nielito "Doc Darl" C. Tupas, sits as Iloilo provincial board member.

(The author, who is now based in New York City, used to be the editor-in-chief of two leading daily newspapers in Iloilo, Philippines.—Ed)

 

Greed for money destroys these ‘corrupt’ politicians

“Earth provides enough to satisfy every man's needs, but not every man's greed.”

—Mahatma Gandhi

 

By Alex P. Vidal

 

IF our grandchildren turned the pages of Philippine political history, they would read the names of Ferdinand Marcos Sr., Joseph “Erap” Estrada, Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, Ferdinand Martin Romualdez, Ramon “Bong” Revilla Jr., Jinggoy Estrada, Zaldy Co, Sara Duterte-Carpio, Loren Legarda, Manuel Bonoan, Chiz Escudeo, Joel Villanueva, among other prominent politicians, in the glossary of odium and infamy.

Records would ostensibly show they destroyed themselves because of “greed for money.”

When given the opportunity and elected to office, they allegedly took advantage of their positions by amassing unexplained wealth and living like patricians, oligarchs, and aristocrats while the ordinary people agonized and could hardly make both ends meet.

Some of them have been prosecuted and jailed, others escaped abroad and opted to become fugitives. Others fake their illnesses in order to avoid imminent arrest. Many of them have not been formally charged yet.

Even before they were accused of stealing billions of pesos from the taxpayers through kickbacks, “ghost” and substandard projects, intentionally misdirecting public funds, inflating, or manipulating during the planning, formulation, and execution phases of government spending, the government thieves were already living comfortably.

 

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In the first place, they weren’t supposed to bilk the people they serve. Accumulating more wealth than what is necessary at the expense of the taxpayers was supposed to be mortal sin.

But because of rapaciousness and their lack of moral scruples, they allegedly stole more; they built empires and purchased private jets and choppers, hid their loot in Cayman Islands and The Caribbean, acquired mansions in the Philippines and abroad, collected queridas and queridos left and right.

Their greed justifies dishonesty, fraud, and exploitation, ruining reputations and long-standing relationships. Spiritual and moral traditions have long warned that an obsession with wealth leaves people permanently discontent and spiritually empty.

By replacing community well-being and ethics with an endless, harmful chase for more, their greed for money destroyed some of them and even the society where they belong.

Their unchecked financial greed funneled resources to a tiny minority, draining stability from the working class. Their act of extracting cash and resources faster than a system can replenish them risks total economic or environmental failure.

Their risky financial schemes and the constant desire for more have frequently led them straight into debt, isolation, and ruin.

 

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I “saw” tears in Alexandra “Alex” Eala’s eyes while she was walking in the exit following a disheartening 7-5, 3-6, 7-5 loss to 18-year-old Iva Jovic of the United States in their third-round match at the US Open on September 5, 2026.

She really wanted to reach the next rounds and was a cinch away from snatching victory from the jaws of defeat when WTA No. 14 Jovic gave the break back in the decider after a double fault, and Eala held at love for a commanding 4-2 lead.

Eala, 21, would have faced former US Open champion Coco Gauf, 22, in the Round of 16 if the Filipina phenom beat her good (not best) friend Jovic, who was easily dismantled by Gauf, 6-1, 6-4 September 7.

Brad Kallet described the Eala-Jovic match in WTAtennis: “Jovic was excellent at the net, winning 12 of her 15 points, and struck 44 winners to 27 unforced errors. Eala came in even more, winning 16 of 25 net points, and had 34 winners to 33 unforced errors.

“Both returned exceptionally well, though Jovic was slightly more effective in the most critical moments, converting 9 of 17 break-point opportunities to Eala's 8 for 20.”

(The author, who is now based in New York City, used to be the editor-in-chief of two leading daily newspapers in Iloilo, Philippines.—Ed)

 

Who are you calling?

“Sometimes the only way to stay sane is to go a little crazy.”

―Susanna Kaysen, Girl, Interrupted

 

By Alex P. Vidal

 

IF I hadn’t been invited to attend the In-Person Adult Mental Health First Aid (MHFA) training at the PSS Home Care in Whitestone, New York City on August 24, I wouldn’t know what 988 is all about, or why and when to call it. I beg your pardon.

Now that we are celebrating the Suicide Prevention Month, it’s imperative that we understand why there’s a need to remember 988; why the three numbers may play a key role even after September.

What’s the difference between 911 or 988, in the first place?

What we know is in the US and Canada, 911 is the primary emergency telephone number for police, fire, and medical assistance; we call 911 for immediate physical danger.

On the other hand, we call or text 988 for mental health, emotional distress, or substance use crises.

Real-time global estimates put the number of suicides at over 480,000 to 720,000+ for the year, though exact official national totals for 2026 are not yet finalized, according to Worldmeter, which tracks an estimated real-time running total exceeding 718,000 global suicides for the year based on World Health Organization (WHO) models.

 

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The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reports that annual U.S. suicides historically average around 48,000 to 49,000 deaths per year but finalized complete data for the current year takes many months to process and verify.

Data show 5.5 percent of U.S. adults have serious thoughts of suicide each year, while 93,452 people were connected with the NAMI HelpLine in 2025. There were 3 in 4 people who contacted 988 report received the help they needed.

If we or someone we know is struggling or in crisis, help is available by calling or texting 988 to reach the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline (in the US and Canada), available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Services are free and confidential, according to the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI).

NAMI recognizes Suicide Prevention Month as a time to raise awareness, spread hope, and spark meaningful action around one of the most urgent mental health issues of our time each September.

Its goal is to ensure that individuals, friends, and families have access to the tools, resources, and support they need to talk openly about suicide prevention, recognize warning signs, and seek help.

NAMI emphasize that reaching out for support can be the start of a new journey forward.

 

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“Whether you are experiencing thoughts of suicide or supporting a loved one, there is help available. Take time today to explore help options, learn about contributing risks to suicide, download resources, and more,” NAMI stated in its website.

It was Jeanne Cacciatore, program director of Family and Children’s Association (FCA) Senior MH Awareness Training Program, Elder Abuse EMDT and Safe Observant Senior Program (SOS), who explained to MHFA participants that a skilled counselor will say hello, introduce themselves, and ask if we are safe when we are connected to 988.

They ask about our safety, and will be calm and comforting, listen to us, provide support, and may also share helpful resources.

According to NAMI, suicide is still too often met with silence, stigma, or shame.

“At NAMI, we believe that silence should never be the response to someone’s pain. That’s why we’re working tirelessly to change that. This September, you can be the difference,” explained NAMI.

“With one conversation, asking someone how they’re really doing — and being ready to truly listen—can save lives. Because here’s what we know: No one has to face this alone. Help exists. Healing is possible. And all it can take is for one person to start a conversation.”

(The author, who is now based in New York City, used to be the editor-in-chief of two leading daily newspapers in Iloilo, Philippines.—Ed)