Pacquiao’s Most Pivotal Moments at LinesMaker

Pacquiao’s Most Pivotal Moments

When Manny Pac­quiao arrived in the United States for the first time a lit­tle more than a decade ago, he was an unknown to all except box­ing diehards.

Even trainer Fred­die Roach wasn’t famil­iar with him the day that Pac­quiao first walked through the doors of his Wild Card Box­ing Gym in Los Angeles.

In those 10 years, Pac­quiao has become the top pound-for-pound fighter in the sport, boxing’s biggest draw and one of the sports world’s global icons.

Here are 15 of the key moments in a career that took him from a home­less street urchin in the Philip­pines to one of the rich­est ath­letes in the world and the idol of millions:

15. Loss to Med­goen Singsurat, Sept. 17, 1999 - It’s impor­tant to start the list of Pacquiao’s defin­ing moments with a loss. Pac­quiao was just 21 and fight­ing for only the third time out­side of the Philip­pines when he met Singsurat in a fight for the World Box­ing Coun­cil fly­weight belt.

Pac­quiao had lost the title on the scale the day before when he was unable to make the fly­weight division’s 112-lbs. weight limit. The fight went on. If Pac­quiao won then the title would have been vacant, but if Singsurat won, he would have taken the belt.

Pac­quiao was so severely dehy­drated that he had lit­tle to offer, and fans who know him now as a blaz­ingly quick, offen­sive fighter would be stunned to see him in retreat and tak­ing pun­ish­ment for most of the fight.

He was knocked out by a right hand to the body in the third round. The rea­son the loss is sig­nif­i­cant is that it forced him to jump not one, but two divi­sions, which was the begin­ning of his rise to great­ness. He moved to super ban­tamweight in his next fight, then won his sec­ond world title on June 23, 2001, in Las Vegas with a dom­i­nant per­for­mance against Lehlo Led­waba. That fight sig­naled the start of the “mod­ern” Pac­quiao era.

14. Vic­tory over Led­waba, June 23, 2001 - Led­waba was the highly regarded Inter­na­tional Box­ing Fed­er­a­tion junior feath­er­weight cham­pion and was sched­uled to appear on the under­card of the Oscar De La Hoya-Javier Castillejo fight. When his oppo­nent pulled out late, he was replaced by Pac­quiao, who was a vir­tual unknown in the U.S.

Roach told every­one he came that week to keep an eye on his “new” fighter, and noted that Pac­quiao would impress. Pac­quiao dom­i­nated the fight and stopped Led­waba in the sixth round.

13. Vic­tory over David Diaz, June 28, 2008 - Roach con­sid­ers this fight the turn­ing point in Pacquiao’s career, so it is hard not to include it on the list. There was no ques­tion going into the bout that Pac­quiao was the more skilled fighter, but he was mov­ing up to light­weight for the first time. More impor­tantly, the fight marked the first time that Pac­quiao was meet­ing a much larger opponent.

Pac­quiao flashed a sign of things to come, allay­ing fears that size would be an issue by using his blaz­ing speed to blitz Diaz before stop­ping him in the ninth. Pac­quiao would essen­tially use the same for­mula to defeat the likes of De La Hoya, Ricky Hat­ton, Joshua Clottey, Miguel Cotto and Anto­nio Margarito.

12. Vic­tory over Marco Anto­nio Bar­rera, Nov. 15, 2003 - Bar­rera was known as “The King of the Feath­er­weights” prior to this meet­ing and con­sid­ered one of the world’s elite fight­ers. Pac­quiao was gain­ing noto­ri­ety but still had a very low pro­file in the U.S.

His pro­file increased dra­mat­i­cally in the wake of the one-sided dom­i­na­tion over Bar­rera. It was no con­test from the start until the stop­page in the 11th round. Though Bar­rera would blame the loss on wild­fires in Cal­i­for­nia that dis­rupted his train­ing camp, it became obvi­ous to all that Pac­quiao was a spe­cial talent.

11. Unsuc­cess­ful run for seat in Fil­ipino con­gress in 2006-07 - By the time Pac­quiao decided to run for Con­gress the first time, he was already entrenched as a box­ing star. By this point, he had already beaten Erik Morales twice and Bar­rera once and was being acclaimed as one of the bet­ter fight­ers in the sport.

But this was the first glimpse the West­ern world had of his inter­ests beyond box­ing and the start of the incred­i­ble jour­ney he is on now.

10. Third vic­tory over Morales, Nov. 18, 2006 - The series was even at one apiece head­ing into the rub­ber match, which was all Pac­quiao. Pac­quiao had stopped Morales in the 10th round in their fight ear­lier in the year, but it was a com­pet­i­tive fight until its late stages.

The rub­ber match was one-sided from the out­set. Pac­quiao showed a qual­ity right hand for the first time, and Morales was unable to deal with the two-fisted attack. Pac­quiao had come under great crit­i­cism after los­ing to Morales in 2005 for being a one-fisted fighter. Roach watched the tape of that fight and agreed.

The two spent the bet­ter part of the next year work­ing to improve the right. It was one of the keys to his third-round knock­out vic­tory in the third fight with Morales.

9. First appear­ance on “Jimmy Kim­mel Live,” Nov. 3, 2009 - Pac­quiao is now a reg­u­lar on the ABC late-night talk show, but when he debuted on the Kim­mel show in 2009, about two weeks prior to his fight with Cotto, it was huge because it was his first time in front of a large Amer­i­can non-boxing audience.

He came off as charis­matic, charm­ing and funny and helped increase his fan base dramatically.

8. Knock­out of Ricky Hat­ton, May 2, 2009 - Pac­quiao had estab­lished him­self as the bet­ter fighter before this match, but size again was an issue. Though Pac­quiao had beaten De La Hoya in his pre­vi­ous out­ing, many attrib­uted it to De La Hoya being over the hill and mak­ing a mis­take in his weight cut.

But Hat­ton was a bruiser at 140 pounds and was clearly in his prime. Pac­quiao showed that not only could he han­dle the big­ger fight­ers in this fight, but also that he could man­han­dle them. He knocked Hat­ton out with one shot in one of the most mem­o­rable fin­ishes of his illus­tri­ous career.

7. Demo­li­tion of De La Hoya, Dec. 6, 2008 - De La Hoya was a for­mer mid­dleweight cham­pion who returned to wel­ter­weight to face Pac­quiao. De La Hoya was on the down­side of his career, but most media fig­ured he was sim­ply too big for Pac­quiao to handle.

But the dif­fer­ence between the men was star­tling. From the early stages of the fight until De La Hoya quit on his stool after the eighth round, it was all Pac­quiao. It was the biggest pay-per-view audi­ence of his career and firmly estab­lished Pac­quiao as one of the top two draws in the sport.

6. Knock­out of Cotto, Nov. 14, 2009 - If there were any Pac­quiao doubters after the knock­out of Hat­ton, he erased them all by stop­ping Cotto early in the 12th round. Cotto came into the fight in the pound-for-pound Top 20 and was a legit­i­mate wel­ter­weight in his prime.

Sim­i­lar to the way he did with Diaz and De La Hoya, Pac­quiao blitzed Cotto with his com­bi­na­tion of speed and power. Jaws dropped at the way Pac­quiao not only dom­i­nated Cotto with his punches, but also at the way he eas­ily took Cotto’s pow­er­ful blows.

5. Sign­ing with Golden Boy and Top Rank simul­ta­ne­ously in 2006 - Pac­quiao was met at Los Ange­les Inter­na­tional Air­port by De La Hoya, who pre­sented Pac­quiao with a suit­case filled with cash as an induce­ment to get him to sign with Golden Boy.

He did, but it turned out that Top Rank also alleged he had signed a con­tract with him. It was a sor­did affair that wound up being decided by an arbi­tra­tor in Top Rank’s favor after law­suits had been filed, but what it showed was how valu­able an attrac­tion he was in the eyes of the sport’s biggest promoters.

If they were will­ing to go that far to bat­tle over him, there had to be some­thing to him.

4. Vic­tory over Joshua Clottey in Cow­boys Sta­dium, March 13, 2010 - Beat­ing Clottey was no major task at this point for Pac­quiao, but what was sig­nif­i­cant was his abil­ity to sell tick­ets in a gigan­tic venue.

Clottey had lit­tle appeal, either as a ticket seller or a pay-per-view draw. After talks to put on a fight with Floyd May­weather Jr. fell through, Top Rank arranged the fight with Clottey with less than six weeks to pro­mote it.

Pac­quiao sold 50,994 tick­ets to the first box­ing match at Cow­boys Sta­dium, firmly estab­lish­ing him­self as boxing’s pre­mier ticket seller.

3. Elec­tion to Fil­ipino Con­gress in 2010 - Pac­quiao clearly learned from the mis­takes he made on the cam­paign trail in his first run. He put together a flaw­less and highly orga­nized cam­paign and won the elec­tion by an over­whelm­ing margin.

If many viewed the 2006-07 cam­paign as a lark, this was clearly the move of a seri­ous can­di­date com­mit­ted to being a politician.

It also made him, as Arum now calls him, “a world figure.”

2. Appear­ance on “60 Min­utes,” Nov. 7, 2010 - All of Pacquiao’s pre­vi­ous accom­plish­ments and the pas­sion Fil­ipinos around the world have for him led CBS’ leg­endary news mag­a­zine to do a fea­ture story on him prior to his bout with Anto­nio Margarito.

Cor­re­spon­dent Bob Simon’s report was viewed by nearly 17 mil­lion peo­ple, pro­vid­ing an unequaled plat­form for a boxer.

It showed him as a man of sub­stance as well as one of the world’s elite ath­letes, and guar­an­teed that he would be a big hit in all future appear­ances in the ring by virtue of the name recog­ni­tion he gained.

1. Arrival at Wild Card Box­ing Club, 2001 - Pac­quiao flew to the U.S. for the first time in early 2001 and arrived in San Fran­cisco. He worked out at a gym in the East Bay, but wasn’t impressed.

He later drove to Los Ange­les and showed up at the Wild Card Box­ing Club with Rod Nazario, who was his busi­ness man­ager. Nazario con­vinced gym pro­pri­etor Fred­die Roach, a respected trainer and dis­ci­ple of the great Eddie Futch, to allow Pac­quiao to hit the mitts with him.

Roach was wowed by Pacquiao’s com­bi­na­tion of speed, power and con­di­tion and took him on full-time. The result is the great­est fighter-trainer com­bi­na­tion in his­tory. Roach has devel­oped Pac­quiao from a crude fighter into an elite boxer with impec­ca­ble technique.

Pac­quiao now calls Roach his “box­ing mas­ter” and doesn’t make a move with­out care­fully con­sult­ing Roach.

Under Roach’s tute­lage, Pac­quiao won world titles at 122, 126, 130, 135, 140, 147 and 154 pounds, was named “Boxer of the Decade” and was a four-time choice of the Box­ing Writ­ers Asso­ci­a­tion of Amer­ica as its “Fighter of the Year.”

The BWAA has named Roach its “Trainer of the Year” five times, includ­ing four of the last five years.

Had Pac­quiao never walked into that gym, he’d prob­a­bly never have become the world force that he has and Roach would never have got­ten such acclaim.

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