Rock star treatment titillates Pacquiao

DALLAS, Texas — Manny Pacquiao felt like a true-blue Texan on Tuesday as he titillated his hosts, the assembled media, and a modest Filipino crowd living here by telling them that the five-star treatment he received is unmatched.

“I feel like a (great) football star,” said Pacquiao on the dais at midfield of Cowboys Stadium, a remark that brought a smile on the face of Jerry Jones, the oil magnate and Dallas Cowboys owner who is teaming up with Hall of Fame promoter Bob Arum in staging Pacquiao’s fight with Joshua Clottey on March 13.

Pacquiao was a bit mesmerized by the presence in the audience of a bevy of Cowboys all-time greats and a handful of ring heroes of yesteryears but it was the way he was introduced that left a lasting impression on him, something that is no longer easy to do what with his stature now.

“That was one great presentation,” said Pacquiao as he awaited the signal to board a private plane that would take him to New York for another press conference scheduled Wednesday at the Madison Square Garden.

With the Cowboys cheerleaders swaying and gyrating like no other, Pacquiao walked through thick artificial smoke to the sound of Survivor’s “Eye of the Tiger” and with fire blasting out from one of the pipes used during Cowboys games.

Clottey, for his part, said he and Pacquiao have something in common.

He said he grew up dirt poor in Accra, Ghana, just the same way Pacquiao did in General Santos City.

“There was nothing there,” Clottey said on Tuesday at Cowboys Stadium in the city of Arlington, site of their March 13 showdown for Pacquiao‘s World Boxing Organization welterweight crown.

“Me and Manny Pacquiao came from the same beginnings. There was nothing in Ghana and that was the same thing with him (in the Philippines),” said Clottey.

Clottey said he “had to fight to survive” and as early as six years old he had known the gratifying sensation of throwing and even receiving a punch.

“I had to fight my way out of poverty,” said the New York-based Clottey, a heavy underdog, according to bookmakers.

Clottey said the Pacquiao fight is once-in-a-lifetime experience and that it is going to be an opportunity for him to alter the course of his life in the event he pulls off a major upset.

Arum was in his usual bombastic self but he lived up to his word that the press conference would be something to be remembered many years from now.

“Wasn’t it amazing?” said Arum, who later joined Pacquiao on the private plane for New York.

Arum pointed to the HDTV – the largest in the world – that was hanging from the ceiling. “There’s not one bad seat here when the fight takes place,” said Arum, confident that the reconfigured stadium will be filled for the Pacquiao-Clottey fight.

Tickets – priced at $700, $500, $300, $200, $100, and $50 – go on sale on Saturday.

Joannah Liad, whose parents are from the Philippines, is among the 23 members of the Cowboys cheerleading group that performed during the press conference.

“I spent my first seven years there,” said Liad, referring to the Philippines. She will also be at the New York press conference.

Source: mb.com.ph