Just One More Time

Someone once said, "The day you get angry at your failures is the day you start winning." Translated, winners are simply ex-losers who got mad. We have always associated success to winning in whatever field - be it sports, corporate affairs, sales, politics, economics, religion ... literally in everything. And everybody will be measured. Question is, "by which yardstick?" It's quite difficult to do measurements as it is quite even more difficult to find a perfectly even playing field. It's a good thing Albert Einstein invented the greatest excuse for differing results - the theory of relativity.

Going back to the ex-losers, I mean, winners, I'd like to say that success is measured or achieved by getting up just one more time than you have fallen. Everybody makes mistakes but the problem is very few learns from those mistakes. Worse, they embrace it and forever live a life of obscurity and misery. The great challenge is to get up every time you fall and to keep up the good work and finish the race. Life is not about pristine and unblemished records. Sooner or later, Floyd Mayweather, Jr. will be slapped with his first ever loss in his boxing career. And if that loss will not come from Manny Pacquiao, it will be from someone else. Nobody is young forever. Father time is just lurking at the corner.

In the physical world, everything can be measured. And so they say that which you cannot measure, you cannot manage. However, I find beauty and relevance in things that cannot be measured. It gives us the license to bask in the great feeling of amazement. That is why we marvel, we stand in awe. In mathematics, there is a symbol for infinity because mathematicians knew infinity exists. Even the great physicist Albert Einstein acknowledged that there is a vacuum inside the human heart that only a divine being can fill. So let's not be dependent on the physical attributes because they all fade. Let us use the energy that makes a person glow even without the batteries - our heart. When it's aflame, it can very well propel a man to achieving greater heights, or simply to get up just one more time than you have fallen.

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.

The Pacquiao Phenomenon

A few years ago, when Manny "Pacman" Pacquiao was making waves in the boxing world, he was uniquely labeled by one of the most respected boxing analysts in the Ring Magazine as "the most exciting fighter in the planet". Although non-traditional as it may seem, the label was very much appropriate and fits perfectly if you have the idea that boxing is iunder the category of the entertainment industry. This sport has evolved into such eversince gladiators started fighting up for their precious but wasted lives inside the Coliseum.

The definition was once again confirmed by the debates made by the analysts and boxing afficionados from around the globe about who's the best pound-for-pound fighter in the world. Currently, Pacquiao holds this lofty title. I concur with Kevin of Yahoo! Sports why Floyd Mayweather Jr. is not. Floyd may have everything Manny has except for one thing - the "thrill" factor. Pacquiao draws attention and when he fights, he keeps one on his toes.

Against the bigwigs, against the high elite of the sports, against the great handicap of race and skin color, against all odds, Pacquiao managed to be at the driver's seat of boxing sports. Immediately after unleashing that lightning-fast cracking left straight that sent London Bridge Hatton falling face down for goodnight sleep, Bob Arum said, "There has never been a fighter of the same combination of power and speed like Pacquiao's."

Paquiao's size, power and looks are unassuming and unbelievable. Literally unbelievable for the other champion boxers they all wanted to test the veracity of his giftedness. And they all fell into the trap, painfully and shamefully. They were all decimated - Morales, Barrera, Marquez, Dela Hoya, Diaz, Hatton and many more non-believers to come. I remember the words of the first United Nations Secretary General Carlos P. Romulo, a Filipino, when he was belittled by a European Head of State whose demeaning words were, "Your'e just a little man from a little country!" Romulo replied, "It is the duty of the little Davids of this world to fling the stone into the eyes of blistering Goliaths!" Pacquiao is today's little David.