IT was the battle of superegos — that of former president Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino 3rd and ABS-CBN Corp. top honcho Eugenio “Gabby” Lopez 3rd — that led to the closure of the broadcast network last May 4.

The pissing contest* between the two alpha males was triggered, ironically, at the network’s top rated news show TV Patrol’s 25th anniversary on July 28, 2012. The speaker was Aquino, who felt himself at the time to be the most powerful president ever, having taken out the previous May Chief Justice Renato Corona and discovering the huge cache of funds with which to bribe anyone he wanted, euphemistically termed the Disbursement Acceleration Program (DAP).