MANILA, Philippines?He looks every inch a young college student, which he is.
Quiet and clear-eyed, he gleams in a gold-hued basketball jacket at the head table, beside RP featherweight sensation Mike Fare?as, who?s fighting in the main event on Saturday.
The boy appears more like a big victim of miscasting.
With his clear, young head, he?s terribly out of place.
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Meet Dodie Boy Pe?alosa Jr., 18, second-year engineering student.
He?s slated to make his professional boxing debut at the Mandaluyong Coliseum, in the undercard of the Fare?as fight.
He stands 5 feet 6, a two-time national amateur boxing champion.
He has already fought a total of 16 boxing bouts.
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OK, he has been boxing for nearly a decade, having donned the gloves when he was only eight.
But, going by the looks, it?s only his name that could be closely associated with prizefighting.
Dodie Boy Jr. could easily be mistaken for a freshman military trainee.
You know, one who has yet to see and smell the battlefield.
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Dodie Boy Sr., two-time world boxing champion, had to do some explaining:
Dodie Jr.?s record is 16 fights. He has won all these. Of those wins, 10 came by stoppage.
That?s amazing, considering that knockouts seldom come in the amateur field.
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But wasn?t Dodie Boy Jr. pushed into the pros too soon?
Maybe, said the elder Pe?alosa, who added that in his last outing in Iloilo, his son fought four bouts in four days.
Dodie Boy Jr. won all those four bouts by knockout!
In fact, the two Cuban coaches with the Amateur Boxing Association of the Philippines singled out Dodie Boy Jr. as the most promising among current RP simonpures, the elder Pe?alosa explained.
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So why didn?t he let his son go and try for an Olympic stint?
?There?s no life in the amateurs, its program is also a mess,? Dodie Boy said in Filipino.
It was not only the impotence and incompetence of the previous ABAP leadership that hastened the young Pe?alosa?s trip to the pros.
?Many boxing people were advising us that my son should turn pro already,? the father bared.
Among these people was Rex ?Wakee? Salud, now a main cog in the Manny Pacquiao Promotions.
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Anyway, in the run-up to the Manny Pacquiao-Oscar De La Hoya Dream Match, an exclusive item was posted by www.philboxing.com about a youthful Filipino boxing sensation.
The report said this talented teenager would be known as ?Marvelous Pacquiao?, thus eliciting a frantic guessing game among boxing aficionados.
Next came hints Marvelous Pacquiao could see action in the Dream Match in Las Vegas.
Dodie Boy Sr. confirmed this report.
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In fact, he said, he had talked with the Pacquiao people who proposed to secure a United States visa for his son.
Of course, one requisite was for Dodie Boy Jr. to use the name Marvelous Pacquiao, if he ever fought in the Dream Match card.
It was not clear how the deal fell through.
Dodie Boy said he had talked to his wife, who meekly disapproved of the proposal for his son to use a different name.
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There was also the suggestion that carrying the name of Manny Pacquiao could prove a terrible burden on the talented Dodie Boy Jr.
Just the same, the elder Pe?alosa, the kuya of WBO bantamweight king Gerry Pe?alosa, bared that Pacquiao is still interested in managing the career of Dodie Boy Jr.
Maybe the Pe?alosas were also avoiding the specter of promising fighters, like Boom Boom Bautista and AJ Banal, to name only two, being tagged as the next Pacquiao before failing miserably.
So see you at the Mandaluyong Coliseum when Mayor Benhur Abalos hosts the pro debut of Dodie Boy Pe?alosa Jr., nee Marvelous Pacquiao, Saturday night.
