The best ever

Call me a romantic fool, but for me, Manny Pacquiao’s best fight was the first fight against Erik Morales. The one he lost.

I was no Manny Pacquiao fan before that, and was severely disappointed when he lost his WBC flyweight title via 3rd round knockout to an unknown Thai fighter. It was a fight he lost even before the actual bout as Manny couldn’t even make weight. It was all too easy to dismiss Pacman as just another Filipino world champion, in a long string of Filipino world champions, who got too fat and lazy after achieving some modicum of success.

But that was before Freddie Roach. Freddie took the raw Manny and taught him the finer points of the sweet science. To Manny's credit, not everyone is coachable. Perhaps the toughest to coach, in fact, would be former champions who learned the sport the wrong way, gaining some measure of success, while employing the wrong techniques. 

But not Manny. He would diligently learn everything that Freddie had to teach him. And it showed in his fight with the Mexican legend, Marco Antonio Barrera. It was a fight no one thought Pacman could win. Philippine TV didn’t even bother to cover it live. Everyone, after all, expects the matador to always slaughter the bull.

Manny has always had the power. It is a god-given raw talent that allows him to knock people out, even from impossibly awkward stances. But against a classy boxer, this raw talent surely was no match. This is what the sweet science is all about, after all, technique rules over power. 

But to everyone’s surprise, the bull would not blindly charge. He had the power still, but now also the technique to fully employ that power. And Marco Antonio Barrera, would be the first in a long line of victims to that lethal mix.

But what made Manny truly a winner in my book, was that one fight against Morales. The first fight. The one he lost.  For it was in this one fight that he best embodied the Filipino spirit, or at least, what the Filipino spirit ought to be. 

Fifth round of the fight, Manny suffered a nasty gash over his right eye caused by a headbutt. With blood streaming down his face, his vision was severely impaired. He was fighting, virtually blind. But bloodied, his head remained unbowed. Vision or no vision, he was going to give it his all. And against all odds he was going win -- or die trying.

Seven more rounds, an almost blind Manny would endure and go on to finish, losing by a mere 1 round, 115-113 in all three judges' cards. But after that fight, again a fight he lost, I was proud to call myself a countryman of Manny Pacquiao.