Manny Pacquiao’s ‘Hex’ Against Floyd Mayweather Is Now In The US

With barely two weeks left to the fight of the millennium, both camps of Filipino champ Manny Pacquiao and American boxer Floyd Mayweather Jr. are predicting victory. While Pacquiao is the underdog because Money May has a zero loss record, a win by the Filipino legislator will stun the Mayweather camp but not Pacquiao’s.

Boxing analysts would likely attribute it to his deadly left hook, particularly if Pacquiao knocks out Mayweather. Others would explain it to his renewed vigour and intensive training.

But could it be because of his secret weapon who has been there since day one?

That weapon is possibly the prayer by Dionesia Pacquiao, the mother of Manny. In the past, she was content with being left behind in General Santos City and locking herself and her friends in a prayer room, interceding for the victory of her son.

However, in the last two fights of Pacquiao against Timothy Bradley and Chris Algieri, she flew to Las Vegas and Macau, respectively, and visibly prayed for her son’s win. Foreign media mistook her unique and very physical way of praying by pointing her finger at the ring while her lips are mumbling prayers as a form of hex.

On Friday, Dionesia and her 40-year-old boyfriend left Manila and flew to Las Vegas to once more support Manny in the much-anticipated fight. She told GMA News that she is once again bringing her powerful tool to help ensure her son’s victory – the rosary.

The Philippine Daily Inquirer confirmed the arrival of Dionesia as well as Manny’s father Rosalio, whose first name sounds a lot like rosary in Pilipino or Rosario. That’s two rosaries in Manny’s side.

But does prayer really work? Like Dionesia, a recent survey found that 83 percent of Americans believe that prayer works, reports Huffington Post. Beyond the faith of these people, the daily asked two researchers the same question.

Stanford anthropologist Tanya Marie Luhrmann said that people who pray use their psychological capacities or the human mind by training their imagination and paying attention to their inner experiences. She said it changes the way they trust their inner experiences and allows them to take the prayer process more seriously.

But Luhrmann admits her explanation is limited to the psychological aspect of prayer. “I’m a social scientist. I can’t say, you know, when that’s connecting to the divine or if it’s connecting to the divine,” she told Huffington Post.

Book author and Skeptics Society Executive Director Michael Shermer cited a 2006 study by the Harvard Medical School, funded by the Templeton Foundation The research had real heart patients in hospital who were recovering, which made results of prayers measurable.

It also randomly assigned people to be prayed for, not prayed for. Shermer said the study found there was no benefit to people’s health from intercessory prayers, but Luhrmann said there is more evidence that a person talking to God through prayer “has health effects both emotionally and physically.”

Because science could not rely on anecdotes, said Shermer, whether Dionesia’s prayers really helped Manny or her will remain a mystery as the words she utters during Pacquiao’s bouts.

To contact the writer, email: v.hernandez@ibtimes.com.au