Just when you think you know nearly everything about Manny Pacquiao from hundreds of newspaper and magazine articles, TV bios and even movies, you find out there’s more to learn in a story written by the daughter of a dear friend.
Makati Medical Center medical director Dr. Benjie Alimurung was in Tokyo for the 2019 FIBA World Cup bidding event last week and during a lull in the proceedings, I saw him ask Pacquiao to autograph a framed copy of a L.A. Weekly magazine with the fighter on the cover. It was the March 12-18, 2010, issue of the publication and Dr. Alimurung’s daughter Gendy, a UCLA graduate, wrote the cover story “The Fight of His Life.”
“She put much research and interest into the Pacquiao article,” said Dr. Alimurung. “She went to (Freddie) Roach’s L. A. gym many times to get a good feel of the team and individuals.” Could I get a copy of the story? Dr. Alimurung said he would send it when we got back to Manila. A few days later, I had it in my hands. The story is one of the best I’ve read about Pacquiao. It’s five years old but still a good, relevant, well-written read.
Here are some gems from Gendy:
• Pacquiao was 11 years old when he took a liking to boxing, inspired by James “Buster” Douglas’ upset knockout win over Mike Tyson in 1990. “The underdog can win, he learned. He punched a rubber flip-flop tied around the trunk of palm tree. He imagined himself a champion.”
• When he left General Santos City to find fame and fortune in Manila at the age of 14, Pacquiao did odds jobs before training in the gym in the afternoon. “He welded steel at a factory then used his weekly pay to buy flowers which he would sell on the streets for twice the price. At 16, he turned pro, a gangly 106 pounds. He fought like a mad dog, wild and out of control.”
• In his early days in Los Angeles, Pacquiao had an entourage of one, Buboy Fernandez. “(They) pound the pavement for half an hour every day, from their rented apartment on Sunset Boulevard and Van Ness Avenue, under the 101 freeway, to the gym at Santa Monica and Vine. They can’t afford a car. Eventually, Pacquiao befriends a Filipino taxicab driver who shuttles them around town for free.”
• In 2001, Pacquiao went to the US in search of a trainer, moving from gym to gym because everyone turned him down for being too small until he discovered Roach. “There is no money in the lower weight divisions. Boxing is obsessed with giants like Tyson and Evander Holyfield, heavyweights who lumber around the ring like ogres. Pacquiao climbs the stairs to the scruffy Wild Card, his second-to-last stop before heading home in defeat. He works one round of mitts with Roach who has always believed the little guys make better fighters. Roach once fought as a little guy, too, long before the Parkinson’s set in, before the Botox injections to the neck, before the daily pills and discussions of brain surgery. ‘Usually, it takes time to get to know somebody because timing is a little bit different, a little awkward,’ the coach recalls. ‘But me and him, it was like we’d been doing it our whole lives.’ In that instant, Roach found his ideal student, Pacquiao, his ‘master of boxing.’”
• Gendy recounted how Pacquiao won his first fight in the US, stopping Lehlo Ledwaba to wrest the IBF superbantamweight crown in 2001. “Pacquiao stepped in on two weeks notice as a last-minute replacement against Ledwaba. By round three, Ledwaba’s gloves were slippery with his own blood, his white shorts stained pink. Elated, Pacquiao brought home the title. One by one, the greats dropped to their knees before him. Pacquiao left Erik Morales sitting dumbfounded against the ropes like he’d had a very bad day at the office. He used David Diaz’ head as target practice. Oscar de la Hoya, he dismantled. Left him perched on a stool, humiliated, stunned, a deer caught in headlights.”
• Gendy said Pacquiao does 1,400 crunches, takes in 7,000 calories and burns more than 5,000 calories a day during training. “Pacquiao wakes up at the crack of dawn, then runs four miles in Griffith Park, all of them uphill. The only creature who can keep up with Pacquiao, who can match his boundless energy, is Pacman, the pet Jack Russell terrier with whom he shares a name.”
• Gendy knocked in some golden quotes from Roach: “My gym has become a tourist attraction. I don’t want (Manny) performing for (the visitors). I want him to perform for me. Boxing is 95 percent mental. Sure, everybody gets in shape. We’re all the same. We get in condition. It’s who can pull it off. Who’s the smart one.”
• Near the Wild Card Gym, Pacquiao patronizes Nat’s Thai Restaurant. Gendy spoke with restaurant owner Tasanee Sridakun. “He changed my life,” said Sridakun. “If I don’t have Manny Pacquiao, I don’t know what happen to me. Maybe, I live on the street. He like a Jesus.” Gendy said the restaurant earns enough in two months of Pacquiao’s training camp to pay a year’s rent as he spends $700 a day to feed his team. “Pacquiao has been eating there since the beginning. His entourage grew so big, people now have to eat standing up or in the kitchen or scrunched beside the cash register.”
• Gendy had her moments with Pacquiao. “When he fights, it is said that violence and crime plummet in the Philippines. Killers stop killing. Thieves take a break from stealing. A nation stops to watch. It pulls together, despite itself. ‘If that’s true, I’d fight everyday,’ says the boxer. When he was poor, no one was ever as generous to him as he is with people now. ‘Because I never asked,’ he says. ‘I worked.’”
Gendy was with L. A. Weekly for eight years from 2006 to 2014. A multi-awarded journalist, she is now a free lance writer and according to her proud father, is writing a novel.