Pacquiao to racists: 'Fight me instead'

Manny Pacquiao has called out the anti-Asian attackers to stop the racial violence and just fight him instead. Isaac Brekken/AP (file photo)

By Ivan Saldajeno

MANILA--This is no April Fools Day joke: Asian boxing superstar Manny Pacquiao wants to challenge those who have been very rude to their Asian neighbors.

In a photo statement right on the very first day of April, the eight-division world boxing champion and Philippine senator called on the Americans who have been hurling racial slurs to the Asian residents in the United States even to the point of beating them to death to go after him instead.

"Stop attacking Asians who can't defend themselves! Fight me instead," Pacquiao said in his message, which was also translated in Filipino, Mandarin, and Korean.

In the Filipino version, Pacquiao even called such attackers "duwag."

On a lighter note, he also said on Maundy Thursday, "We have one color in our blood! Stop discriminating."

Racial discrimination has been rampant in some parts of the United States, but the violence related to it erupted further during the COVID-19 pandemic especially since the last days of former American president Donald Trump.

Trump, who lost in his reelection bid to Joe Biden last year, has been criticizing China, where COVID-19 was said to originate from, so much that he hurled some xenophobic remarks, somehow triggering the "whites" to attack the Asian-American residents.

In his first day in office as US president, Biden issued an executive order condemning the said racist attacks.

Follow him on Twitter: @IvanSaldajeno