Mark Magsayo reveals he is a hardcore Manny Pacquiao fan.
But it doesn’t mean that he is tickled pink whenever people start calling him as the eight-division legend’s heir apparent.
“A lot of people are speaking of the next Manny Pacquiao,” Magsayo said in an interview by Premier Boxing Champions (PBC), which is staging his shot at Gary Russell for the World Boxing Council (WBC) featherweight crown on Saturday night (Sunday in Manila) at The Borgata in Atlantic City, New Jersey..
“I tell them, ‘There’s no next Manny Pacquiao. There’s only one Manny Pacquiao.”
Magsayo was over the moon in November 2003 when Pacquiao scored an upset win versus Marco Antonio Barrera.
“I remember thinking, ‘I want to be like him’. He’s been my hero since I was a kid.”
In a few days, Magsayo attempts to show his childhood hero that he was right in signing him up under MP Promotions, whose chief is the ever-influential Sean Gibbons.
Magsayo admits he feels “a lot of pressure” being an MP Promotions talent.
A few months ago, Magsayo proved that punching power is boxing’s primary weapon when he picked himself up from the floor to flatten Mexican Julio Ceja in the tenth round at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas.
He banked on his vaunted right hand to get the job done and leave Ceja, unconscious and badly hurt, on his back being attended to by the fight doctor.
But securing a title shot wasn’t handed to him on a silver platter.
Magsayo, 26, had to leave the Philippines during the height of the pandemic in 2020 with wife Frances Arbie and set up camp near Freddie Roach’s Wild Card Boxing Club in Hollywood.
Things began to work magically and soon, Gibbons was telling him about the Ceja title eliminator and an assured crack at Russell’s title.
