Manny "Pacman" Pacquiao

This is the first piece of sports writing I have ever done (and probably ever will do).

People in the United States may not be familiar with Manny "Pacman" Pacquiao, but he is a household name here in the Philippines and a national hero. Today he rewrote boxing history by becoming the first person ever to win seven world titles. He is the welterweight champion, hailing from General Santos, Mindanao, Philippines.

A lot of my friends and family back home might find this surprising, but I have become a casual boxing (as well as ultimate fighting) fan since arriving in the Philippines and I spent today, Sunday, watching Pacquiao's latest match against Puerto Rico's Miguel Cotto.

But the truly remarkable thing about Pacquiao's fights is not what happens inside the ring, but outside and on the streets.

I have been told repeatedly by many different people that when Pacquiao fights, the streets of Manila, a city of almost 1.6 million, are empty and the crime rate drops to zero, according to the Philippines National Police. I can certainly attest to the affect Pacquiao's fights have on my little town: the streets were almost completely empty, accepting children playing games outside, many of them pretending to punch each other. I had decided to go for a little walk just to get out of the house and wait for a couple rounds to advance. It was incredible to walk down a stretch of a few blocks and hear the same TV station tuned in, the sound leaking through the windows and to the street. I could literally walk the entire town and stay updated on the fight. Talk about surround sound. And no matter where I was in town, I could here periodic eruptions of cheers emanating from the auditorium where people where gathered to watch the match as it was meant to be seen, as a crowd.

To many Filipinos, watching Pacquiao is a patriotic obligation and watching him win verges on the spiritual. The best part of the experience is that there are two celebrations when he wins. His fights have most recently been taking place at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas and the satellite feed is typically a couple hours late here. All those in attendance in Vegas and watching live on HBO, many times overseas foreign workers (OFW's), or Filipinos working abroad, and expat Filipino-Americans text the verdict back here. Many here celebrate before the match even begins here over the satellite feed and again when he wins on the international rebroadcast.

One of the more humorous aspects of this match was the surname of Cotto. Here, in the Visayan dialect, cotto means lice and coincidentally, Pacquiao does commercials here for Head and Shoulders. We all got a good laugh when posed the question by a co-teacher, "How can Pacquiao expect to win against lice only using Head and Shoulders?"