Pinoy Mano Mano underground

It was during one of these meetings in a cafe along Tomas Morato that actor and director Richard Arellano pitched a germ of a concept: film and television actors bloodying each other in the boxing ring. Nginiiig! associate producer Ryan Evangelista and I immediately leapt upon that thought. It was very mainstream and very interesting. Admittedly, I knew nothing of boxing at that time but the mere idea of television celebrities duking it out on national TV seemed to me a fucking entertainment goldmine.

The short of it is that we fleshed out that concept and made an AVP out of it. Along the way, we had other brainstorming meetings for other concepts but the celebrity boxing show seemed to have the most promise. By March I was called upon to develop some new shows for ABS-CBN, Ryan was busy with various shows, and Richard was preoccupied with other projects. The celebrity boxing AVP was shelved. When pitching day came around some months ago, we decided to take out the AVP and present it to ABS-CBN’s pantheon. We immediately got the green light. And that’s how Pinoy Mano Mano was born. Hey, look, I don’t have any pretensions that Pinoy Mano Mano isn’t a rip-off of Stallone’s boxing show, The Contender. On the other hand, Sly Stallone didn’t have Justin Timberlake knocking Heath Ledger’s teeth out. We have TJ Trinidad busting up Jordan Herrerra’s nose. And that was just during a test episode. So y’all watch now, hear?