HOLLYWOOD--America's most popular fighter (oh, yes he holds the same distinction in his native Philippines) kicks it up another publicity notch on the Sunday before his Saturday, Nov. 13 bout at Cowboys against Mexican outlaw Antonio Margarito.
That's when reporter Bob Simon and the crew from the popular “60 Minutes” program on CBS, once the highest rated program on US television back in the three networks, no cable era, will have spliced together all the Manny Pacquiao-related footage and interviews they have been putting together going back to the May Congressional election in Sarangani Province.
Being a featured subject on the newsmagazine show, which rose to the top along with celebrated reporters such as Mike Wallace
and Ed Bradley, remains a big deal in this country and I asked Simon, himself the winner of 22 Emmy Awards, a veteran foreign correspondent and an owner of a prestigious George Foster Peabody Award, if he could recall the last time the New York based program had a professional boxer as a subject/topic.“Well,” Simon said as he stood outside Coach Freddie Roach's Wild Card Gym as his crew shot footage of Pacman having his customary postworkout dinner inside Nat's Thai Food in this gritty section along Vine Street, “we did a story on Oscar de la Hoya when he was just starting to become so popular.”
Simon, a grizzled newshound who normally is talking to terrorists or world leader types, said he's been amazed at both Pacquiao as a person and at the fighter's popularity in his homeland.
“He is so popular back home that everything stops when he fights, even crime which is good since the police stop to watch Manny fight also,” Simon said. “It's different with Pacquiao. People talk about how popular Muhammad Ali was but there were lots of people who did not like him. Also, I don't think there has ever been such a popular fighter to rise from such poverty the way he has.”
Ali, of course, was despised in some quarters for his refusal to step forward when drafted into the Army. The heavyweight champion reasoned that it was wrong for him to go into combat in Vietnam “because no Viet Cong ever called me nigger.”
I asked Simon why Pacquaio, why now especially when world events provide more than enough fodder for the program.
"Another reason is that he is the best of the best when it comes to boxers,” Simon said.
“If he was the Number 2 fighter, we would not be interviewing him.”
Simon said that his sitdown interview, conducted at a boxing show at Yankee Stadium with Pacquiao and his promoter, Bob Arum, was not lengthy.
“It was good, it was enough,” Simon said. “Manny is a bit limited in English and he did not talk for five minutes straight but we got enough.”
I wonder if the Pacquiao episode will be “must see” in the various Mayweather households in Las Vegas.
Can't you just imagine L'il Floyd eyeballing it on his HD big screen sets inside his Big Boy Mansion?
Btw, it is not true that it takes Roger Mayweather an hour and half to watch "60 Minutes."
(mlcmarley@aol.com)
Source: examiner.com
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