HE LOVED TO DO GREAT THINGS quietly, almost in secret.
What’s odder was he would often refuse credit for his selfless deeds.
Finding me with no room at the Vagabond Inn, next to the Wild Card Gym, during a stopover on the way to a Manny Pacquiao fight in Las Vegas, he excused himself over breakfast.
He next returned from the inn’s front desk and gently handed me a room key.
However, he vehemently refused to be thanked, as though it was his duty to save visiting reporters in distress.
* * *
The case of Manny Pacquiao, whom he goaded to superstardom, was another one for the books.
He claimed everything happened purely by chance.
Here was how Rod Nazario, who passed away at 74 on Thursday, traced Pacquiao’s first big leap towards all-time greatness:
“One summer, when I was planning to go to the United States, Manny called me and wondered if he could try his luck out there. I took him along. We first went to San Francisco; we stayed with my son, Boying. Manny tried a nearby gym; he didn’t find it to his liking. We took a bus to LA after two days, and went to my nephew.
Next I put him in a boarding house. We next started looking around for a trainer. Wild Card in Hollywood was just a mile away from the boarding house. I’d heard about Freddie Roach, but I didn’t know he was the guy holding the punch mitts inside the ring.
When I got a chance, I approached him and told him I have a WBC International titlist. Let him suit up, Roach said. They did the mitts. Once Manny was done, he went to me and said: Boss, OK ’to. You know, it was the first time I heard Manny approve of a trainer, because he always trained by himself back home. He didn’t believe in other trainers before. Manny was already training everyday for almost two months; he had gotten into fighting shape, so I started looking for a fight for him.
It was around this time that I met Murad Muhammad, who agreed to put Manny in one of his cards. Anyway, I was already packing up for home when I got a call from Murad. He asked me if we would be willing to substitute for an injured title contender, Hector Velasquez.
This chance comes only once in a lifetime. There were only ten days left before the championship. They didn’t know Manny, so he was an awful underdog in that fight against Lehlo Ledwabah.”
* * *
Everybody here by now knows how Pacquiao crushed, bloodied and stopped Ledwabah to start his climb to the stars.
But, although he would be identified as Pacquiao’s manager, Nazario often stayed in the background.
The reluctant starmaker, in fact, had refused to take full credit until the end.
Said Mr. Nazario: “I was to leave for Manila that evening, but I got a call from Murad in the morning. I cancelled my trip and signed the contract for Manny. Had I left then, Murad would have gone off and looked for another fighter.”
Nazario, who quietly guided Pacquiao through his ups and downs, said there seems an “Unseen Hand guiding Manny all these years.”
