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SANTA
MONICA, California—Against a backdrop of chaos found in
boxing and on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange,
Manny Pacquiao met the press last week.
He is a
130-pounder, a super-featherweight whom Bob Arum says is
“the most beloved fighter in the world today.” Arum
sells tickets and pay-per-view showings of his fights,
so you may dismiss his hyperbole.
Pacquiao,
from the
Philippines,
is top-ranked in all of the “WB” groups, World Boxing
Association, Council and Organization. His presence
draws a breathing-room-only crowd at the Palm restaurant
in Santa Monica.
It is
hard to tell the reporters from the groupies, or if the
reporters are the groupies. At one point, there are 81
people in a room designed for 50, and it becomes
believable that Pacquiao may, indeed, be the biggest
thing in the Philippines since Imelda Marcos’s shoe
closet.
His
story is compelling. He slept on a mat on a dirt floor
until he was 12, helping the family survive by selling
cigarettes and doughnuts on the street. He wasn’t a
street fighter but loved to watch highlight films of Ali
and Foreman, and eventually left his home in General
Santos City for Manila in the pursuit of a boxing
career. There, while he learned to box, he sewed buttons
in a clothing plant and struggled to learn the different
Tagalog dialect spoken in Manila.
Now, at
28, with a record of 43-3-2 and 33 knockouts, he is the
Kentucky Derby horse in Arum’s Top Rank stable. He is in
our city because Arum wants to sell about 50,000
pay-per-views here of Pacquiao’s fight on April 14 in
San Antonio against Jorge Solis, and is so wildly
popular, we are told, that 600 people showed up at LAX
to greet his arriving plane.
“We
never release his arrival time,” says Top Rank publicist
Bill Caplan. Good thing, because Pacquiao is about 90
minutes late.
With the
noise level and body heat rising, a large, muscular man
sits down, and introduces himself as Michael Bentt. He
is a former heavyweight boxer, now a sometime star of
stage and screen. Among Bentt’s highlights are knocking
out Tommy Morrison and playing the role of Sonny Liston
in the movie “Ali.”
He says
he stopped after only 14 pro fights “because I got hit
too much.”
This
moment of sanity in a sea of nonsense passes quickly.
Arum sits down and theorizes on why boxing is losing so
much audience to the UFC, Ultimate Fighting
Championships.
Turns
out, he says, that the UFC, although its product stinks
and is actually more violent and dangerous than boxing,
understands its audience better, keeps the action going,
the fights coming and the young crowd hyped up.
He says
boxing doesn’t do that anymore—except Arum will
now—because it has sold its soul to television, and
television, mostly HBO, makes promoters stop the music
and hype so it can have a quiet background for
between-fight announcers’ analyses. Arum says his shows
will no longer have pauses “for Larry Merchant to
pontificate.”
Nor does
Arum want Pacquiao’s show to be a sham, a battle already
lost. Realizing his news conference has become a noisy
sardine can, he slams his fist on the table and bellows,
“I won’t have this kind of schlocky show.”
Soon,
Caplan is trying, and failing, to establish order by
inviting the gathering to the buffet line as the program
is about to begin and announcing, “I don’t want to hear
any noise in this room except the chomping of your
gums.”
In the
back, the buffet line lurches forward as a server tries
to speed things up by barehanding hamburgers and
tomatoes onto buns.
Eventually, there is a seat next to Pacquiao and a
chance to ask some questions. His English is passable,
he is friendly, but the exchange of real information is
difficult. He says he has seven homes and when he is in
the Philippines, people find him and ask him for money
everyday.
One of
his advisers, Michael Koncz of Foothill Ranch, confirms
that, saying that Pacquiao will go through as much as
$1,000 in a day and that the only time he saw the
fighter turn somebody down, Pacquiao didn’t have his
wallet with him.
Pacquiao
is so popular he is running for a seat in the Philippine
congress. The fight with Solis was scheduled April 14 so
he could campaign before the May 11 election day. The
image of California Congressman David Dreier in silk
Everlast boxing trunks pops to mind, and, thankfully,
pops out.
Pacquiao
says he is running to “help the people.” Isn’t $1,000 a
day more helpful than a signature on a sewage bond?
Then,
there is the story of the bag with $250,000 in cash
delivered to Pacquiao by the competing Golden Boy
Promotions camp last fall, a bag that was accepted, then
returned, along with Arum’s status as Pacquiao’s
promoter.
Pacquiao
is asked about it and looks blankly into the distance.
Arum labels the Golden Boy move “thuggery,” and Koncz
explains that it is all being cleaned up by lawyers.
Understandably, lawyers hover around boxing like
sparrows at a picnic.
Almost
three hours into this nonsolitary confinement, Arum
tells reporters that Solis, Pacquiao’s opponent, would
have been there but is having visa problems in Tijuana.
Arum says Solis is in line at City Hall, but is delayed
because “there is a mariachi band in line in front of
him.”
Outside,
where there are air, sunshine and a chance for clear
thinking, the decision is made to write about this.
Readers will know you can’t make this stuff up. It is
boxing. |
