Amazon888 Blog

SAN DIEGO – Bob Arum knows too well that Nov. 14 is not going to be a picnic for Manny Pacquiao.

In fact, the big boss from Top Rank expects a real tough fight for the pride of the Philippines who’s scheduled to challenge Miguel Cotto of Puerto Rico for the WBO welterweight crown at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas.

With a quick glance at the fight odds, Pacquiao at +250 (you need to bet $250 to win a hundred) and Cotto at -210, it’s not hard to say that the Filipino icon is favored to win a record seventh world title in different weight classes.

But Arum said it won’t be a walk in the park.

“One thing is for sure. If Manny wins it’s not going to be easy. It will be tough,” said Arum yesterday from the frontseat of the Suburban that was taking him to a three-hour ride from

Secretary by Day, Royalty by Night

By Paul Schwartzman

The king folds her own laundry, chauffeurs herself around Washington in a 1992 Honda and answers her own phone. Her boss’s phone, too.

Peggielene Bartels lives in Silver Spring and works as a secretary. When she steps off an airplane in Ghana on Thursday, arriving in the coastal town her family has controlled for half a century, she will be royalty — with a driver, a chef and an eight-bedroom palace, albeit one in need of repairs she will help finance herself.

“I’m a big-time king, you know,” said Bartels, seated at her desk at the Ghanaian embassy just off Van Ness Street NW, where she has worked for almost 30 years.

Peggielene Bartels

In the humdrum of ordinary life, people periodically yearn for something unexpected, some kind of gilded escape, delivered, perhaps, by