Last Sunday morning (Saturday evening in Las Vegas) was supposed to be People’s Champ Manny Pacquiao’s last professional fight, and while there are a lot of people who regretted not having watched it—owing perhaps to the still lingering letdown of last year’s loss to retired and undefeated champion Floyd Mayweather—I was one of the very few who was glad not to have seen it live at all.
I started to consciously miss watching Pacquiao’s fights when it was announced that he would fight Oscar dela Hoya back in 2008. At the time, dela Hoya was on the wane, though one of his last fights prior to matching up with Pacquiao was an encounter with Mayweather which he narrowly lost on points.
Being taller and presumably stronger than Pacquiao, I felt a sense of dread in learning that Pacquiao and dela Hoya would finally square off in the ring. Years of watching the People’s Champ in action in the ring had made me feel as both a Filipino and an occasional boxing fan, somewhat invested in his career.
Of the many fights in his now storied career, the one that made me empathize with Pacquiao’s struggles in the ring was his match with Mexican Erik Morales which he lost owing to what he described in a tearful post-fight interview were major discomforts like tight, ill-fitting boxing gloves and shoes (boots?) and so on.
Under the watchful eye of his trainer Freddie Roach, Pacquiao was given the best training, facilities, nutrition and conditioning that money can buy, and he thrived in that environment, notching up a string of victories that raised his profile to boxing’s stratosphere.
I read back then that dela Hoya, who had become a boxing promoter, was trying to recruit Pacquiao into his Golden Boy outfit, but the deal fell apart.
While his victories, including an early stoppage of Marco Antonio Barrera, were quite impressive, I wasn’t that confident that Pacquiao would be able to beat a sure Hall of Famer like dela Hoya, much less knock him out. Remembering that post-fight interview of years past, I wondered if the smaller Pacquiao had an even fighting chance against dela Hoya.
Thus I contented myself with reading pre-match preparations and analysis of self-styled and professional boxing analysts of the Pacquiao-dela Hoya match. When Fight Day came, I just tuned out the hype and focused on work while hoping, like the rest of the Filipino people, that the General Santos native will prove his doubters wrong.
And prove them wrong he did, by winning a knockout victory over dela Hoya who simply gave up and proved Roach, his former coach, right when Roach famously told him that he “couldn’t pull the trigger anymore.”
Since then I decided not to watch Pacquiao fights, just confining myself to listening to the radio, to the cabbies who listened to the fights on radio and monitoring the progress online. And each time, the People’s Champ won. I thought, hmmm, maybe there’s something to this.
When I did decide to watch Pacquiao fight live in late 2012, it was a real shocker as he lost via knockout to his persistent nemeses Juan Manuel Marquez. So again I resumed my “abstinence” of not watching Pacquiao fight and the People’s Champ started winning again.
When last year’s Fight of the Century between Pacquiao and Mayweather was confirmed, it wasn’t that hard for me to decide not to watch it even if it would, for better or worse, be the talk of the country for days after. I thought then, that somehow Pacquiao will win.
As we all know by now, he lost but not because of lack of trying. And while he blamed his loss to a right shoulder injury, I didn’t feel quite as sympathetic when he made that admission.
That he earned millions of dollars in upfront pay and millions more in pay-per-view revenue made his loss not such a national tragedy. It was different back then after the Morales fight, when he was a quite formidable force but still not on the same rarefied air that Mayweather was in, when he was still building the foundation to his legend and eventual legacy.
So when the Pacquiao-Bradley fight unspooled last Sunday, it wasn’t that much of a surprise to learn that not a few Filipinos weren’t all that hyped up about the event.
Again, there’s not much to regret about that because Pacquiao’s now legendary fights have been captured in all their glory in digital video disc and (both paid and pirated) downloads.
If last Sunday’s fight was to be his last, Pacquiao at least came out on top. I join the millions of grateful Filipinos in thanking Pacquiao for the memories.