LAS VEGAS ? There is a fiercely held journalistic aphorism that argues the best stories are ?man bites dog,? meaning readers favor the unusual over the normal. You can excuse Manny Pacquiao if he doesn?t share that opinion.
The most popular fighter in the world started off homeless and alone, a small face lost in the crowd. Tonight the boy who once slept in the streets of Manila, selling doughnuts to survive, will earn $120 million to risk his WBO welterweight title in a unification bout with multi-belted champion Floyd Mayweather Jr. The boy he once was could never have imagined he would become a man who in one night will be half of the highest grossing fight in boxing history.
?Manny ran away from home after his father ate his dog,? Pacquiao?s longtime trainer Freddie Roach explained this week, while talking about his fighter?s decision to leave General Santos City for Manila at the age of 14. ?He bought doughnuts at a doughnut store and then sold each one for a nickel more than he paid to survive.?
His family unable to feed six kids, Pacquiao set off on his own already understanding life was a fight. As it has turned out, it has been a fight he?s won big from the moment he discovered boxing as a young teenager searching for any way he could to survive, to this moment, arguably the moment he has prepared all his life for.
?Before I became a boxer, I used to sleep on the street,? Pacquiao recalled this week. ?I can?t believe that I am in this position. The boy who didn?t have food and slept on the street can have this life.
?I loved boxing from the very first time I went into the gym. I knew that was what I was going to do with my life. Now I want to be an example and inspiration to people.?
Tonight Pacquiao wants a bit more than that. He wants a piece of Floyd Mayweather Jr.?s hide.
?This is one of the most important fights in my boxing legacy,? Pacquiao (57-5-2, 38 KO) admitted. ?I want to make it a good result. I want to win. I have to prove something. My confidence is different than for other fights. I feel excited. This is it.?
For five years, Pacquiao has pursued the undefeated Mayweather (47-0, 26 KO), sometimes relentlessly, other times at less than a full sprint. They seemed to circle each other like two sharks seeking to rule the waters, but not quite sure when to attack.
Tonight they will, but with Mayweather now 38 and Pacquiao 36, some believe the fight has come a few years past their primes. Perhaps, but if so the public hasn?t noticed. More than 11,500 paid $10 (or 10 to 20 times more on the scalper?s market) just to watch the two of them step on a bathroom scale at the weigh-in yesterday at the MGM Grand Garden Arena. And it is estimated when all the revenues are collected that this fight will shatter every gate and pay-per-view record in boxing history with a likely overall revenue stream of around $400 million.
Those numbers are astounding, a fact Pacquiao willingly concedes, but when the first bell sounds, none of this will be about money. At that point, it will be about only one thing ? breaking the spirit and the will of an opponent obsessed with winning and ready to bleed and suffer far worse to do it.
?Manny has wanted this fight every minute of every day for five years,? trainer Freddie Roach said. ?He worked as hard as he ever has for this.
?He took me into his changing room a couple of times to ask me to watch tape of the ways Mayweather fought guys. Manny never watches tape. He?s very motivated.
?We built a second gym downstairs (at Roach?s gym in Hollywood, Calif.) and trained there with only a few people around. On the days we sparred and worked on strategy we had no distractions. I didn?t have Manny trying to perform for an audience. He was performing for himself. I liked what I saw every day.?
What he saw was a fighter preparing for the moment that will define his career. If Pacquiao loses he will still be considered among the great fighters of his day, winner of world titles in a record eight separate weight classes and the best fighter ever to come from the Philippines. But to erase Mayweather?s zero, to be the first man to beat him, would put a notch on those championship belts that rivals no other.
Although soft-spoken by nature, inside Pacquiao beats a fury born from the kind of experiences few of us could understand. When your father eats your dog, well, that?s a good spawning ground for a great fighter.
?I?m so happy because that feeling and that focus that I had many years ago, is back,? Pacquiao said. ?I have my killer instinct back. I?m faster than those guys he?s fought. I?m different than those 47 other guys.?
Certainly he is. Not simply because his father ate his dog … but that was the start of it.
