On a sunny and warm Saturday afternoon in Hollywood, they slowly and surely trickle in. In all shapes, sizes, and ages, Filipinos have gathered at the Wild Card Boxing Club to see their national icon, Manny Pacquiao, as he prepares for his March 19th battle against Erik Morales.
And as it hits high noon, the number of Filipinos quickly dwarfs the number of fighters and other white collar types that get in their weekend workout at Freddie Roach’s gym, which is located on the corner of Santa Monica Blvd. and Vine St. above a busy laundromat.
Those who have come early have grabbed seats, while others mill around the 1,200 square foot gym and gawk at the boxing photos and posters that adorn the wall. The biggest and most prominent one is a poster sized photo of Pacquiao posing with his IBF belt, which was placed on the far wall to the left of the gym’s entrance just days after his career defining win over Marco Antonio Barrera. On the far wall, nearest the boxing ring, hangs a flag of his country.
Some stragglers, who just can’t wait for their man’s entrance, hover outside the tightly packed parking lot.
At about a quarter past twelve, as the ‘Pac Man’ makes his way from the neighboring Vagabond Inn, where he and his camp stay in cramped quarters, he is besieged by dozens and dozens of his worshipers as they swarm around him like bees to honey.
Pacquiao, if anything, is the walking, talking, human smiley face. And he seems to enjoy the euphoria surrounding his entrance, as he is mobbed by autograph and photo requests. He amiably shakes hands and smiles for everyone that has come to see him, signing anything put in front of him at a brisk pace.
As he gets his hands wrapped by Roach, fans jockey for position near the two as if they were fighting for an errant shot in basketball. All for a picture with Pacquiao getting his hands ready for today’s workout. As Roach goes about his work, flash bulbs can be seen going off regularly and cell phones are being held up to take their pictures.
A man comes by with a stack of t-shirts selling for $15 dollars that contain a likeness of Pacquiao, and which read ‘Peoples Champion’. They sell at a steady pace.
The commotion leads one non-Filipino to ask, ‘Is this a media workout?’
No, it’s a Saturday afternoon before a Pacquiao fight, which makes the Wild Card Boxing Club in Hollywood ‘Lil Manila’. It’s a place where on Saturdays, everybody and anybody is welcomed to see their icon.
And this is actually a compromise made by Roach and his staff as ‘Lil Manila’ was starting to break out every day, making it impossible for Roach and his other boxers and clients of the gym to get their work in.
Back in 2001, Pacquiao came to the gym as an anonymous figure, working quietly in preparation for his bout against Lehlo Ledwaba. But as his reputation and fame grew, the gym has become more and more infiltrated by his followers. So much so that a ‘Saturday only’ policy was put down by Roach.
“We’ve been slowly getting them out,” explained Roach, who has about as liberal an open gym policy as there is in the sport. “So they’re not showing up during the week now because everyone gets thrown out. If I let one in, I gotta let ’em all in. So it’s just the way it is. It’s the only way we can get ready for this big fight.”
Which isn’t completely true, since Roach and his staff are tough guys, but with soft hearts. The bottom line is these men would make terrible bouncers.
“We wanted one of the Filipino people to tell the Filipino people they couldn’t come in. But none of them would do it,” said the trusty Macka Foley. “So we had to do it. We had to look like the bully and then they stopped listening to us and they just came in.”
Many times they would state unequivocally that the day’s session would be closed, only to be met at the front door by a family of Filipinos with wide eyed kids.
“Their eyes are wide, their drooling and they’re thinking they’re with their hero, they’re going to get a picture with him and then we tell a little kid he can’t come in? I mean it’s hard and you feel bad for the kids,” said the big softy.
So eventually, a closed gym morphs into a semi-open one, which can be an inconvenience for the others who work on a daily basis at the Wild Card.
“For us,” grouses Justin Fortune, who handles the physical conditioning of Pacquiao and most of Roach’s other boxers, “it’s a pain in the ass. But you have to give his fans something. As the fight gets closer and the sparring gets a little more intense, more serious, then these people are out; it’s a closed camp.”
We’ve heard that before. But they are trying their best to curb the onslaught of ‘Pac Man’ fever on a daily basis.
“It’s too much of a distraction; he never trained like this for Barrera and he destroyed Barrera,” said Fortune, who despite his tough talk, has let more than one straggler in on these supposed days of the gym being locked down like Ft. Knox. “It’s just too much of a distraction to sign autographs and this sort of bullshit. You can’t have it, it’s a serious fight.
“You can’t work out,” he continues. “There’s like 50 Filipinos in here, and the gym holds 20. It’s too hard, it’s too much for everybody.”
As the numbers swell and Pacquiao gets ready to go into the ring, his customary Shakira CD is played loudly. As his camp liaison, Akbar Muhammad, would point out to me later, “Hey, Sonny Liston had ‘Night Train’, Manny has Shakira.”
As he is being gloved up by Roach, the fans edge closer, all trying to sneak in one last signature on their souvenirs before the tools of his trade are put on him. It seems that Pacquiao mania has reached such depths that even Buboy, his loyal assistant, is asked to sign a plethora of autographs. Did that ever had to Bundini Brown or Crocodile?
Finally, at about a five minutes before one, he is finally in the ring and at least 50 of Pacquiao’s fans have made their way to the Wild Card. It’s nearly impossible for someone trying to work out to not bump into or elbow a Filipino as they try and get their workout in. With all the bodies inside the room, the temperature rises considerably and Tagalog is heard freely.
Pacquiao would spar four brisk rounds with welterweight Javier Garcia and then a few rounds with a kid Foley calls ‘Armenia’ because well, he doesn’t really know the young Armenian lightweight’s name and because, “I call ’em all ‘Armenia’; I keep it simple.”
As the sparring ends, Pacquiao receives a loud ovation from his legions, as ‘Bundini’ Foley bellows out to the crowd, after the last bell sounds signifying the end of the sixth round, “MANNNNY PAC-EEEE-OWWW, GIVE IT UP, C’MON, BABY, LET’S HEAR IT FOR HIM!!!!’ The crowd dutifully follows his command.
As he gets to the speed bag, a few more fans trickle in, wide eyed and hopeful that they could still get a glimpse of their hero. As he jumps his rope, then shadow boxes and then does his abdominal workout with Fortune, he leads a mass of humanity wherever he goes throughout the gym – like a Filipino Pied Piper.
Make no doubt about it, there is no other place these people would rather be.
One fan, named Eric, is a 23-year old student who made the two hour drive from San Diego to see Pacquiao. “That’s the only reason why I came out here,” he says. “I paid $200 for seats at the MGM Grand and this is a little bonus right here. You don’t get to see Manny all the time; he’s from the Philippines, this is a bonus for us.”
Eric, who has brought his co-workers on this day to Wild Card, believes that this upcoming bout on March 19th is Pacquiao’s biggest.
“I think so,” he says. “He’s got to prove that he can take on Morales and he had a draw with Marquez – I thought he won but I’m a lil’ biased – but every fight’s big for him.”
Then there is Brian, an accounting supervisor from the valley, who says of the Morales showdown, “It’s huge, the biggest of all-time for any Filipino boxer. I mean the Barrera-Pacquiao fight was already seen as Ali versus Frazier, basically.”
Brian is such an avid fan that he says he traveled to the Philippines to watch Pacquiao’s last bout in December. When Pacquiao fights, he says “It’s a huge party, like the Super Bowl,” he says. He estimates he had about 60 people at his home for the Barrera bout. He has also purchased tickets to the March fight. Sources say that Morales-Pacquiao tickets are selling at a faster pace than the third bout between Morales and Barrera.
Levi is another fan who made his way from Oxnard. Sporting a t-shirt of the Pacquiao-Juan Manuel Marquez fight which took place last year, he comes with a camcorder. “He’s a hero for us,” he says simply.
But not everyone who hit the road to see Pacquiao are fans, as various members of the Asian-American media have come to interview Pacquiao, such as Regina Reyes of ABC-CBN International, who came all the way from San Francisco. And several others come with cameras and microphones to talk to the former two-time champion.
By 2:15 in the afternoon, Pacquiao has finished his workout and has gotten out of his boxing gear into his ‘No Fear’ regalia, which seems appropriate given his fighting style. As he comes out of the dressing quarters, Pacquiao is again surrounded by the masses, which haven’t thinned out too much.
Because of his association with the fighter, Roach has become quite the noted celebrity to Filipinos. If Pacquiao is the Michael Jordan of that country, then Roach is it’s Phil Jackson. Roach himself is asked to sign numerous autographs, including a Filipino flag. It’s clear, Roach is an honorary Pinoy.
Roach says that while having all these gawkers in the gym at once is an inconvenience, there are some benefits to having an audience – but at a cost.
“He’s energized by it,” he says of his fighter. “But we have to work on the fight strategy also. And when he has a crowd, he wants to perform for them and not me. And that doesn’t make me happy.”
The respected trainer believes that some fighters thrive under the scrutiny of performing for the public. He remembers that he would get the very most out of Virgil Hill during public sessions. “He would actually spar harder and better because he was performing for people,” recalled Roach.
But while having there is some downside to having such an open door policy, it’s actually refreshing to see a fighter who is still so open and willing to reach out to his fans and the media. It hearkens back to a day when fighters would give almost unlimited access to anyone who was willing to drop by.
You’ve all see old black-and-white footage of legendary fighters like Joe Louis preparing for big fights in front of large clusters of fans and media, who would sit in rapt attention on ringside bleachers. Even Sonny Liston, thought to be the surliest of the surly, would conduct public workouts before his bouts at the Thunderbird Hotel in Las Vegas and then hold court at the hotel coffee shop. Muhammad Ali was legendary for his hospitality.
Back then, this was the norm, not the exception.
“I mean there was a time when the promoters got word out to the media about fights – and had it day after day – by putting on public sparring sessions,” said Larry Merchant, who back in the day was a columnist for the Philadelphia Daily News and New York Post. “And the media would be there and they would interview the guy that day and etc.
“When it segued into an era in which every sparring session is treated like a military secret, I don’t recall and why. I certainly think there were celebrity fighters, the guys that the writers were genuinely interested in, who appeared to lead the way in this. I mean, De La Hoya, it was always difficult to see him spar.”
During boxing’s heyday, Merchant would spend time in camps of fighters such as Ali, Joe Frazier, Liston and Rocky Marciano, getting a backstage pass to see the game’s biggest figures, who in turn benefited from the coverage.
Bob Arum, who is co-promoting Morales-Pacquiao, says that this is a relatively new trend that has come about.
“Certainly throughout the 80’s, into the 90’s, fighters loved to have people watch them work out because it relieved the boredom,” he explained. “I mean Ali used to love to work out and after he worked out he would do a little shtick with the people, he enjoyed it. Now recently, fighters don’t do it and I think one of the guys that started that stuff was De La Hoya.”
Which echoes Merchant’s thoughts. And perhaps De La Hoya has led the way on many fronts, as he was one of the first high profile boxers to make his way up to Big Bear to train in seclusion, and his media days, as the years went on, became less about physical activity, but a glorified conference call where you had to drive up a mountain to ask the same banal questions everyone else had. It was in essence, a conference call that was much harder on your brakes and transmission.
‘The Golden Boy’ would try his best to accommodate everyone that came up to his palatial Big Bear cabin. But getting him to shadow box? Maybe. Chop some wood? Yeah, he’d do that. Hit the mitts? Sometimes, if he felt like it. But spar a few rounds for the gathered scribes? Fughetaboutit.
And this goes for most fighters, nowadays.
“He wouldn’t do anything and what it was I was never quite sure,” said a frustrated Arum, who promoted De La Hoya for much of his career. “And he always put it that he would be giving away secrets and that kind of stuff. Which of course was patently ridiculous. What kind of secrets are there?”
He has a point, as boxing is not that complicated of a sport. You have a jab, a cross and a hook, for the most part. Trainers will say that watching a few tapes of actual fights is enough to gather whatever scouting report they need. And again, would it hurt just to open up the camp once a week like Pacquiao does and put on an actual show?
“I think Pacquiao, who again, remember, comes from a different country and a different culture, I’m sure is doing what the Filipinos do,” hypothesizes Arum. “Which is what Ali taught him to do when he was over there, they love to do public workouts.”
Merchant believes that the reason why fighters are less inclined to reach out anymore is that many of them are getting paid a guaranteed fee and not working off of a percentage of the gate and closed circuit sales, as they had to in the past. Foley, a former fighter, thinks many fighters who battle the scales don’t want to make their problems with weight public.
But Arum has a different belief on why most camps are now run like the KGB.
“First of all, the sad thing is you don’t have trainers like we did before. In other words, the whole quality of people training fighters has really decreased. As a consequence, a lot of the trainers are reluctant – not only the fighters – to do public workouts because I think they’re really afraid, without knowing, I think they’re really afraid that people will see how little they really know.”
Now there is a whole generation of fighters who are conditioned NOT to promote themselves and interact with their constituents. And many of them may not know what they’re missing out on.
Before Lennox Lewis’ last bout against Vitali Klitschko, he was coaxed into doing a public workout at Universal Studios, in light of poor ticket sales at the Staples Center.
“I think it’s the first time he had ever done a public workout and you know what? By the time we were done, he wished he could do more of them because he had a blast,” said respected publicist Fred Sternburg, who remembered that Shane Mosley also came by to get in a quick workout for the public. “I think once they got into it, they enjoyed it and they liked interacting with the fans. But I think up to that point to get them to do it, it’s a pain in the neck for them to even think about it.”
But it’s ironic, that in an age when boxing coverage from the general media has been downsized greatly – if not completely eliminated – boxers who should do more to push themselves from a marketing and promotional standpoint, are actually doing less.
And now, fight coverage has basically been reduced to hopefully getting some ink on a big fight during the days leading up to the bout. The days of a fight getting weeks and weeks of coverage are extinct.
And a familiar pattern has been set: there is an opening press conference a few months before the fight, then maybe a media day (where nothing of note happens anymore), but more likely a conference call, the final press conference on the Wednesday or Thursday before the fight, and perhaps some coverage of the weigh-in.
What this has led to is a avalanche of ‘cookie-cutter’ stories that all follow the same template, devoid of any real, meaningful insights into the subjects or the event. The closeness and the intimacy that was once shared by the boxers, fans and media is long gone, for the most part, replaced by homogenized coverage.
“That’s one of the sad things about the sport,” says Arum, who mentions how open and accessible Ray Leonard, Marvin Hagler and Roberto Duran were, even for their biggest battles. “People bemoan the fact that there isn’t enough coverage and they (the boxers) have to look to themselves as one of the reasons why there isn’t coverage, is that you’re not giving the press anything to cover.”
So what we have is a self-fulfilling prophecy.
“Exactly, right,” agreed Arum, whose voice rises.”What are they (the media) going to do? Listen to the same bullshit on the conference call!?! I mean with Hagler, I remember in Palm Springs, writers would come and they would write reams on how he looked, his sparring partners, and today, they make everything a secret.”
A secret, unfortunately, that’s not getting out enough.
As Pacquiao conducts his last interview and signs his last autograph, it’s nearly a quarter to three. As he heads back to the Vagabond Inn, he is followed by a trail of his fans.
For the next hour-and-a-half, he would entertain them some more by singing and playing the guitar for them in his room.
This guy really is a throwback and ‘The People’s Champion’.
