Manny Pacquiao on a mission

LAS VEGAS - Manny Pacquiao, or at least his image, is everywhere these days.

It’s on the cover of the Asian edition of Time magazine, a blow-up of which is on an easel in the corner of the press room at the MGM Grand as if it’s a work of art. Considering how difficult it has been in recent years to get a boxing article even in Time’s sister publication, Sports Illustrated, one can see why people think so.

He’s on the front page of the Sunday New York Times [NYT] sports section, which apparently rediscovered boxing existed this week after its sports editor took a public lambasting from HBO Boxing analyst Larry Merchant. The story makes Pacquiao sound like the savior of a nation.

He’s in The Wall Street Journal as the financial engine reviving the oft-buried but never quite dead fight game, and on the Jimmy Kimmel Show singing a ballad like the Filipino version of Andy Williams.

Oh, and tomorrow night, in case anyone forgets to mention it, he’ll be in the ring at the MGM Grand Garden Arena performing his real job - boxing better than anyone else in the world.

Pacquiao will be trying to win what, through the use of the kind of loose accounting practices that got the world economy into its present straits, is being billed as a record seventh world title. If Pacquiao does, he will have gone from a 112-pound flyweight title holder to a champion in a division 35 pounds heavier. He will also have fulfilled the expectations of most boxing experts, who feel his speed and power is intersecting with WBO welterweight champion Miguel Cotto’s physical decline in a perfectly concussive parabola.

Pacquiao (49-3-2, 37 KO) is a delightful fellow, an unusual blend of geniality outside the ring and ferocity in it. He never has a bad word to say about his opponents but that doesn’t dissuade him from brutally dismissing them with a powerful left hand and a sweeping right hook that is a relatively new addition to his arsenal.

Couple that with speed and a strong willingness to engage in hand-to-hand combat at the ringing of a bell, and you have the best pound-for-pound fighter in the world - and the most popular.

Yet his kind of popularity is a double edged sword.

While it has made him wealthy beyond any dreams he had when he ran away from a life of poverty in General Santos City at 14 after his father ate his dog, it has also brought great feelings of responsibility for his many countrymen still in desperate economic straits.

He has given away so much money his promoter, Bob Arum, says he may have to fight until he’s 50, while his trainer, Dedham native Freddie Roach, needs a full-time security detail at his Wild Card Gym in Hollywood during the weeks Pacquiao trains there because the crowds are so large they can’t get anything done otherwise.

“Manny’s a throwback,” Roach said. “He’s like a Henry Armstrong type. You don’t have fighters like that today that move up in weight like this to win championships in all these different weight divisions.

“He’s carrying his punch and his power with him along with his speed. He’s passing people like Sugar Ray Leonard, who was a six-time world champion. He’s on a level of the top five fighters of all time.”

Arum and HBO hope the magnitude of the challenge and Pacquiao’s popularity will drive pay-per-view sales over a million. Early indications hint they could approach 1.4 million, which was a record for a non-heavyweight fight until Oscar De La Hoya and Floyd Mayweather, Jr. did 2.4 million two years ago.

Considering that only 25 fights in boxing history have done over a million buys, it would be a remarkable feat that harkens back to the climate for boxing 25 years ago, in the days of Leonard, Hearns, Hagler and Duran.

“Even Mike Tyson didn’t have the drawing power that Manny has right now,” Roach said. “The way Manny arrived the other day people were swarming to try and get a touch or a look at him.”

Tomorrow night, only one man will be trying to touch him, however, and it will be someone who couldn’t care less about his place in boxing history or in the eyes of his countrymen. The most popular fighter in the world hasn’t lost sight of that, which in his job is a good thing.

“This fight is a challenge,” Pacquiao said. “Cotto is a good fighter and a hard puncher. But I’m confident in my ability. I always believe in my power.”

Inside the ring or out, he’s earned the right to feel that way.

Source: bostonherald.com