Unknown boxer has shot at life-altering win on Pacquiao-Bradley PPV

LAS VEGAS – Life was often difficult for the young Manny Perez. Until he learned to box, he was often picked on mercilessly in school because of his small stature.

Perez didn’t have a solid relationship with his father, Manuel Sr., until he started to box at age 11. The younger Perez had a knack for the fight game his father so loved, and they bonded together watching tapes of old Julio Cesar Chavez fights.

Cash was always tight and, Perez says now matter-of-factly, the family was often evicted from its home when he was a boy. Gathering up all of the family’s possessions and moving on no notice became an accepted part of life for him.

He learned to box in a gym on the East side of Denver, which was across from the juvenile detention center. Former WBC lightweight champion Stevie Johnston used to hold his training camp in that gym.

He noticed a 12-year-old Manny Perez working out with badly worn out sneakers.

Johnston made the first defense of his title on July 26, 1997, in Kanagawa, Japan, by winning a split decision over Hiroyuki Sakamoto. When he returned to Denver, he spied Perez working out.

“He asked me if I had a better pair of shoes and I said, ‘No sir, I don’t,’ ” Perez said. “And so he turned around and he reached into his bag and he pulled out this pair of white Pony [boxing shoes]. I’ll never forget them. They were white with a black logo and he’d only worn them in that fight. He handed me the shoes and said, ‘Here, try these,’ and he gave them to me.”

The shoes were size 8 ½, far too big for the 12-year-old Perez. But these were the shoes worn by a world champion, and they were sure a heck of a lot better than the worn-out sneakers he’d been using.

He was going to wear Johnston’s shoes, good fit or not.

“I just got some tissue paper and I would ball it up and put enough of it in the front of the shoes until they fit,” he said. “Man, I wore those shoes so much. I used them so much, they were about falling apart.”

Once again, the family was being evicted, again on short notice. And in the rush to gather their belongings, the brown bag with Manny’s boxing gear was left behind, gone forever.

But Perez never forgot the kindness that Johnston showed him by giving him the shoes in the first place. And as an adult, he’s always made it a point to think of others before he thinks of himself.

He’s going to make his pay-per-view debut Saturday on the undercard of the Manny Pacquiao-Timothy Bradley rubber match at the MGM Grand Garden, facing Jose Carlos Ramirez.

Perez is about as unlikely of a pay-per-view fighter as ever existed. He’s 25-11-1 with six KOs and has, in boxing parlance, been the opponent his entire career. He’s faced elite fighters before – like fighting Victor Ortiz and Brandon Rios – but he’s always been the guy brought in to allow the star or the budding star to pound on.

And some might look at his bout with Ramirez, a 2012 United States Olympian and highly regarded prospect on the verge of a world title, and think this fight is the same thing.

It’s not, however. Perez said he’s going to fight with every ounce of strength in his body, and after listening to him detail his daily ritual, it’s not hard to believe him.

Fight Week officially kicked off Monday at the Top Rank Gym here in the shadow of the famous Las Vegas Strip. Noticeably absent was Perez, though through no fault of his own.

Perez is employed full-time in Denver at a company called Inline Distributing, where he loads and unloads trucks.

“I couldn’t get off work before Wednesday,” Perez. “We were short-handed and they needed me. But that’s OK.”

For the last three months as he’s been preparing for Ramirez, he’s had an incredibly brutal schedule that tests one’s toughness, both mentally and physically.

The 32-year-old father of three awakens each day at 3:30 a.m. and is at the gym by 4:30 a.m. to begin his workout. He works out for 90 minutes, then showers at the gym and reports to Inline Distributing to start his day at 6:30 a.m. He’s done with work at 5:15 and heads right back to the gym, where he arrives at 5:45 p.m. for another round of training.

He’s there until 7:30 or 8 p.m. His wife works the afternoon shift, so he has to stop and pick up the kids on the way home. He then cooks dinner and helps his three boys with their homework.

When his wife gets home, they eat dinner together before he hits the sack again at 10:30 p.m., only to start the thing over five hours later.

“My wife is a great support system and given this is the biggest fight of my career, I wanted to make sure I took no shortcuts and did absolutely everything I could possibly do to be ready,” he said. “I left no stone unturned so I could be successful come [Saturday].”

Promoter Bob Arum is beginning his 51st year in the sport and says stories like Perez’s are what separates boxing from so many other sports.

To steal a line from Arum’s rival Don King, yesterday’s nobody is often tomorrow’s somebody in the snap of a finger.

A win in the right place at the right time can literally be life-altering.

“That’s what makes boxing great,” Arum said. “You take a kid who has labored in obscurity and if he’s successful – and even if he’s not, if he just performs – it can change his life and remain with him forever.

“The stories that come out of boxing, these real, heart-rending stories that most people never hear about, are incredible.”

Perez has had it difficult his whole career and, indeed, his entire life. He dreams of being able to earn enough money to be able to buy his young family a home.

He’ll make $34,000 on Saturday to face Ramirez, not enough to buy a home outright, but certainly a good place to start.

It’s been a long, hard road and the odds have always been against him. His luck may be changing in this gambling town, where so many dreams have been broken with a simple roll of the dice or cut of the cards.

“Absolutely [the deck was stacked against me] in most of my fights,” Ramirez said. “When you take the road less traveled as a fighter and you don’t have the opportunity to sign with a major promoter, or any promoter who can look out for you, you wind up taking the harder fights, usually on the road, a lot of times on short notice.

“You take fights when they come because inactivity is the worst thing for a boxer, and when you don’t have a big-time promoter, you don’t know when the next shot comes so you can’t afford to say no to too much. … I’ve taken a lot of fights in the other guy’s back yard and in places where the cards were totally stacked against me. This is that once in a lifetime shot where I can get the major promoter and be able to hang onto that dream of winning titles and making money that all fighters have. It’s one fight away from being a reality for me.”