The savior is 5 feet 6 inches tall, tips the scales at about 145 pounds and has the weight of a sport, a country and arguably one of the most powerful owners in football on his shoulders.
That’s the load welterweight champion Manny Pacquiao is carrying into the ring Saturday night when he faces disgraced former welterweight title holder Antonio Margarito at Cowboys Stadium in Arlington, Texas, for the vacant World Boxing Council 154-pound junior middleweight championship.
This Pac-Man — not to be confused with cornerback Adam Jones — is the short-term salvation for Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones, whose football team is so woeful that it already has put new wrinkles in Jones’ plaster face.
The overhyped Cowboys are 1-7, forcing Jones to fire coach Wade Phillips this week. The franchise has become the target of scorn and ridicule in Texas — particularly at the same time the Texas Rangers woke up and reached the World Series, presided over by Texas icon Nolan Ryan.
In the second year of Jerry World — the $1.2 billion home constructed by Jones — the Cowboys’ disaster, coupled with the rise of the Rangers, couldn’t have come at a worse time for Jones.
That’s why the presence of Pacquiao this week is at least a Band-Aid for the beleaguered owner because Jones knows — unlike his football team — that the talented and charismatic fighter will deliver a good show that will bring, for a boxing match, a remarkable crowd to his stadium.
In March, more than 50,000 people came to Cowboys Stadium to watch Pacquiao fight an unknown and unremarkable opponent named Joshua Clottey. It was hardly an entertaining fight; Clottey, the chosen one to be defeated by Pacquiao, had a strategy to survive most of the night instead of fight. But Pacquiao has come to transcend the performance of an opponent.
As the only shining light in the darkness that has descended on the sport of boxing, fans are so starved for an electric presence to follow that Pacquiao’s frenzied pace attracts a following by itself.
Plus, there is the story of Pacquiao as a Filipino hero — a member of Congress in the Philippines who has become an international icon. He was profiled Sunday on “60 Minutes.”
All of that may have to be enough to satisfy fans; there is no dance partner available to create a Pacquiao fight instead of a Pacquiao show. Everyone was anticipating a showdown against undefeated Floyd Mayweather, but Mayweather put that fight off by demanding that Pacquiao — whose rise in weight and success from flyweight to welterweight fueled speculation of performance-enhancing drug use — submit to prefight drug testing. Now Mayweather is facing possible jail time — as much as 34 years — on eight misdemeanor and felony charges involving a domestic dispute with his girlfriend and the mother of his children.
So the chosen one to be defeated Saturday night is Margarito, who could not get licensed in Nevada or California because he used plaster-like illegal hand wrappings in a 2009 fight against Shane Mosley.
He may need them to have a chance against the 31-year-old Pacquiao, whose hands will be wrapped with the hopes of the Cowboys owner, the sport of boxing and the Philippines on Saturday night.
Examiner columnist Thom Loverro is the co-host of “The Sports Fix” from noon to 2 p.m. Monday through Friday on ESPN 980 and espn980.com. Contact him at [email protected].
