The Oddball

In his signature murmur-like speech, Freddie Roach moves his head left to right and vice versa without taking off his eyes before the man holding a highly sensitive microphone positioned a few inches away from a host of other live cameras, microphones and cellphones. Roach declares, "Manny Pacquiao is an oddball. You won't simply see and experience a fighter of his caliber in a generation!" Roach, a former ring pugilist himself, was neither in a marketing program nor into a team aggrandizement propaganda when he made this declaration. He knows what he was saying and definitely knows where his prized ward is going. And that was almost two years ago. Now, the world knows who Manny Pacquiao is - the Fighter of the Decade, the pound-for-pound king and the only man to wear seven glittering loose belts around his waist and not draw a negative comment from fashion icon Tyra Banks.

In today's standards, given Pacquiao's current iconic status in boxing, Roach's declaration that Pacquiao is an oddball is actually an understatement. Wikipedia defines oddball as unusual or eccentric. Pacquiao is more than unusual. He has transcended the not so usual all-victory and no-loss record by many of the boxing greats. It is now about getting into the edge of what is humanly possible, without the magic and the drugs - only skills and determination. This is what people of all races are hungry about knowing. We crave for answers for questions like "Can he demolish De la Hoya?", "Can he absorb beatings from a true welterweight?", "Is he strong enough to put down a steel-chinned 155-pounder?"

Our demands and clamor are actually what defines the quality of fight Pacquiao delivers. He feeds our cravings to see what we haven't seen yet, so promoters and match makers invent something new out of this necessity. These are the things that make Pacquiao different from the rest - a pure eccentric, an oddball. That is why we cannot ask why the world is watching... because you won't simply see a man like Pacquiao in a generation.