El Rey Del Knockout and Reimagined Tinikling

As we await another Pacquiao fight on November 22, allow us to regale you with the little-known story of a Spanish-Filipino boxer who was the world welterweight champ in the 1920s-1930s and whose winning record was only broken by Manny Pacquiao in 2013.

Luis Logan, “El Rey del Knockout,” was that rare breed of boxer who didn't have to fight his way out of poverty. He was heir to an international perfume business; the world-famous "Tabu" was the family product. That Luis chose to be a professional pugilist makes for a riveting story that our regular writer Myles A. Garcia painstakingly unearthed. "Before Elorde and Pacquiao, There was Luis Logan" indeed.

Another fascinating historical piece this week is Penelope V. Flores' "Gemelli Carreri, An Italian in Manila 1696," about the first travel writer who wrote about his one-month visit to Las Islas Filipinas and introduced the islands to the world.

Back to the present, Daniel Griffith, a Filipino American, writes about his three-month eye-opening, life-changing immersion in the Philippines and poses a challenge to his co-millennials to learn more about their parents' homeland. Daniel is part of the Kaya Collaborative, which coordinates immersion trips.

A tribute to the late Fernando "Jerry" Barican, well-known youth leader, businessman and once presidential spokesman, comes from his bosom friend, Nelson Navarro, who witnessed the ups and downs of Jerry's life. 

My blog is about the process of whittling down one’s life to the bare essentials: Rightsizing.

For our Videos of the Week, we bring you three amusing ways the national folk dance, the Tinikling, has evolved.