The Ring Magazine is older the Heisman Trophy. Known as the Bible of Boxing, the magazine was founded in 1922 and since that time there have been five owners and six chief editors. The Magazine’s current editor, Nigel Collins, is the only person to hold that position twice and is one of the sport’s most respected journalists and has being covering the sport since the seventies and was one of Manny Pacquiao’s first proponents and continually supported the Filipino legend’s accent to super-stardom by putting him on covers and by doing a lot of special exclusives which included a 2004 trip to the Philippines.
This past Tuesday on FightFanNation’s weekly radio show, Nigel Collins talked about Pacquiao’s greatness and noted, “After Manny fought Barrera the first time and knocked him out he won the Ring featherweight championship. There was a TV company over there who sponsored my trip so they could make a documentary. It just so happened at the time a national election was coming so at the time every politician wanted Manny on their side. So there was a lot of attention on me going over there with the belt and giving it to Manny. We actually gave the belt to him in the Palace with the president Gloria Arroyo right there. So I realized how huge he was in the Philippines and this was after the first Barrera fight and I thought it was crazy then so you can imagine what it is like now, all these years later, all the big wins later.”
“The reason I liked him is very simple, he made great fights. He has refined his technique that is true, but Manny is going for the knockout every fight every chance he gets and we don’t get that very often. He was the kind of guy that excited me as a kid when I was a fan and I could tell right away the way he took Barrera apart that he was going to be someone that people would want to see. I think Pacquiao is one of those fighters that if we are lucky comes around once every generation. I was also lucky enough early in my career to have covered Aaron Pryor. Of course he had a lot of troubles and burned himself out and if any of the fans remember how he fought, all punches all the time from all angles. I think Manny is a little bit like Aaron Pryor, but he can hit a heck of a lot harder and he has actually improved his game. Pryor maybe could have been like Manny Pacquiao without the personal problems, but that’s not the way it worked out. It’s very hard to say, but of the fighters that I have seen in my lifetime and certainly the fighters that I have covered he is definitely in the top ten,” noted Collins.
