EDITORIAL - The Pacquiao Chapter (Freeman editorial 12/6/08) realized

The editorial in this paper last Saturday (Friday in Las Vegas, the eve of the fight between Manny Pacquiao and Oscar dela Hoya) got it right on the money. Entitled “The Pacquiao Chapter,” it did not make a prediction but dwelt on what ought to be good for everybody.

Prior to the fight, almost every boxing expert worth his salt picked de la Hoya to win the fight. And no one can blame them. On every paper in the book and every statistic on record, there was really no compelling reason to go for Pacquiao.

The only thing Pacquiao had going for him was the solid support of an entire country and the intangibles that no record nor statistic can ever pin down in a sport that is decided by only two men in the ring and never outside it.

As we said in that editorial, incidentally reprinted in PACLAND, the website of Pacquiao fans worldwide (www.mannypacquiao.ph), it should be Pacquiao who should win because, all things being equal, it is his time to strut the world stage of boxing.

Greatness, we said, does not reside in a single person, or else it will die. Greatness has the ability to move on and reside in other in turn. Feeling that de la Hoya has had his day, we felt it was time for Pacquiao to shine.

The fight that was an improbability from the start, and taken for a joke by some, even right to the moment when the starting bell actually sounded, now seems on hindsight to have been preordained.

Pacquiao could not have strutted on the world stage of boxing as its newest hero merely on the backs of a Barrera, a Marquez, a Morales, or a Diaz. It had to be by way of the back of the Golden Boy of boxing himself.

Thus, as the fight moved on toward its inevitable conclusion, we had the uncanny feeling that this was the moment Pacquiao needed. It was the fight he needed to win if he were to mean anything at all in boxing. How happy we are on being right. How happy we are for Manny.