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

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.

Alex P. Vidal, who is now based in New York City, used to be the editor-in-chief of two leading daily newspapers in Iloilo, Philippines.—Ed