ABU DHABI: Retired tennis player Monica Puig voiced her support for fellow Puerto Rican Bad Bunny ahead of his upcoming Super Bowl halftime show and admitted it has been difficult to witness the backlash against the NFL’s decision to select him to perform in Sunday’s showpiece.

Puig, who made history in Rio 2016 by becoming Puerto Rico’s first Olympic gold medalist, was working as the stadium presenter and MC at the Mubadala Abu Dhabi Open tennis tournament in the UAE capital this past week.

The 32-year-old cannot wait to watch her compatriot light up the Super Bowl 60 stage and is disheartened by the controversy created around his upcoming performance.

“I’m getting off of a 15-hour flight tomorrow and I will be turning on the TV to watch Bad Bunny, Benito, or as they call it, the ‘Benito Bowl’,” Puig told Arab News in Abu Dhabi on Saturday.

“It’s been a really controversial moment, which has been hard to see because, being from Puerto Rico, it is an American territory, it is part of the United States. And people have really said they wanted an American artist (to perform at the Super Bowl) when we are an American territory.

“We have a US passport, US currency, everything. We are part of the United States. The only thing that we cannot do is vote for the president. But we are essentially part of the US.”

Bad Bunny, Benito Antonio Martinez Ocasio, has been the most streamed artist on the planet in four of the past five years and the NFL is hoping to bank on his mega popularity to expand their global reach.

But some in the United States are not happy that the Super Bowl halftime show will be performed in Spanish and others have criticized Bad Bunny’s public stance against the actions of Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials, which prompted him to skip the US on his latest tour to protect his audience.

Last week, Bad Bunny became the first artist in Grammy Awards history to win Album of the Year with a Spanish-language album, receiving the honor for “Debi Tirar Mas Fotos.”

He won three awards that night, taking his total Grammy tally to six, and when accepting one of them, he said, uncharacteristically in English: “ICE out! We’re not savage, we’re not animals, we’re not aliens. We are humans and we are Americans.”

Puig has personally met Bad Bunny before and is certain his performance is going to be “a treat”.

“He’s earned it. Album of the Year; his album has resonated with all of Puerto Rico. It has even made a big international impact,” said Puig, whose first dance at her wedding was to the Bad Bunny song “Ojitos Lindos.”

“People who don’t know Spanish love his album. And like he says, it doesn’t matter if you don’t even know Spanish, just learn to dance and you will enjoy. He is a great showman.

“He loves Puerto Rico with all of his heart and it’s really great to see that the things that I feel for Puerto Rico and the things that I feel for my country, he feels as well. And I think we all do.

“All Puerto Ricans can pretty much resonate with that. So I’m going to be watching. I already told my husband we are going to order pizza. We are going to sit down. We are going to watch this performance because it’s going to be just ... I wasn’t able to go to his concert because I was pregnant. I wanted to go back to Puerto Rico to watch. So for me, this is going to be a treat.”

Puig, who lives in Atlanta with her husband Nathan Rakitt and their six-month-old daughter Mila, understands everyone is entitled to their opinion but wishes people can see the commonalities between us all as human beings, rather than the things that divide us.

“It’s been quite tough to see the divide because I don’t think I’ve really seen so much pushback on many things. I mean, we have seen Latinos perform at the Super Bowl. We’ve seen Shakira. We’ve seen so many different faces and voices take the stage that are not American,” she said.

“To be able to see that kind of pushback, it’s been a little puzzling. And for me, it is what it is. We’re not going to change what’s going on. We’re not going to have any impact on what people say.

“And that’s their own opinion. Everybody’s entitled to their opinion. But I know that I am a 100 percent fan.

“We all have to love and embrace one another. Just because we are from somewhere else, just because we speak a different language doesn’t make us any different. We are human. We put our shoes on one foot at a time and we all have dreams, ambitions, goals. And that’s the most important thing.”

A ‘wild’ week in Abu Dhabi

Dreams, ambitions and goals were on full display in Abu Dhabi this week, where Puig had a front-row seat to the phenomenon that is Alex Eala.

The young Filipina has risen to rockstar status back home as she has made her way into the top 50 in the world rankings and she drew capacity crowds in the UAE capital for every match she played in singles and doubles.

In doubles, she partnered another groundbreaking southeast Asian, Indonesia’s Janice Tjen.

Both players are making history for their countries every time they step on a tennis court.

Puig knows a thing or two about making history and has some advice for the likes of Eala and Tjen.

“I think to enjoy it, embrace it,” she said.

“It also is a big responsibility because you are pretty much the face for your country. And I know the Philippines has had success in other sports, but Eala now being the face of tennis, Filipino tennis, and Janice Tjen for Indonesia.

“It’s really great to see these players coming from their countries and making a big boom. And to see their fan base also follow them is something really cool because it doesn’t matter if they know tennis, they don’t know tennis, they show up for their countrywomen. And it’s really been super exciting to see, especially here in Abu Dhabi, a lot of Filipinos here, a lot of Indonesian fans in here. So it’s been a pretty remarkable week.”

Puig described the atmosphere during Eala’s matches as “absolutely wild” and said it reminded her of her own experience competing at the Rio Olympics en route to the top of the podium.

“They were just loud. They were so passionate and they were really trying to encourage Eala to win. And you saw that they were just suffering along with her,” she added.

This year is the 10-year anniversary of Puig’s Olympic triumph.

Asked to reflect on the standout moment from her run in Rio, she said: “I think the biggest moment for me was seeing back home the reactions of everybody afterward, after the fact.

“Because I didn’t really know or understand the impact that it had in Puerto Rico. And then my agent at the end of the match, he’s like, ‘You have to see what's going on.’ And I was just flabbergasted. I was stunned. And it was the biggest of the biggest celebrations.

“And just to see what it meant and knowing that sports in Puerto Rico really have the power to unite the island and really have the power to kind of dim all of the negativity that’s going on and just kind of bring happiness in that moment. It was just wild.”