Oscar de la Hoya and Manny Pacquiao.

Manny Pacquiao has indeed come a long way from being a doughnut vendor in General Santos City to becoming one of the most exciting fighters of his generation.

This week, ESPN’s newsmagazine "E:60" featured Pacquiao’s rags-to-riches story, starting from his humble beginnings up to his present stature as one of the Philippine’s national treasures.

As told to E:60 reporter Jeremy Schaap, Pacquiao said he decided to become a boxer at the age of 11.

He said he made this decision after seeing his uncle and several companions huddled around a radio. They were listening to the broadcast of the the Mike Tyson-Buster Douglas fight.

“I told my uncle, I wanna be like them (boxers),” said Pacquiao.

At 16, Pacquiao was already fighting as a professional although he was legally “too young to fight”.

“Somebody told me, ‘oh, you can't fight... you have to be 18 years old’. So I just cheated my age. I was 16,” he said.

His weight problems were quite different then. Pacquiao said his trainers had to “improvise” to make sure that he made it into the 105-pound limit.

“I was 98 pounds. But during the weigh-in, I put metal in the pockets [to make the weight],” he said with a laugh.

Pacquiao said he was willing to do anything just to get inside the ring. “I love to fight,” he said. “I wasn't scared.”

Before discovering boxing, Pacquiao had to help support his parents and his five siblings by selling doughnuts in the streets of General Santos. He was forced to leave school in the third grade because of poverty.

Now that he has become a successful prizefighter and a multi-millionaire, Pacquiao said he wants to give back to the community by helping the poor.

“I understand the feeling of not eating for one [whole] day,” he said. He said this is the reason why he never wanted to leave the place where he grew up.

“I can move," he said. "But I love the place where I was born."

Now, he is preparing for the fight of his life. On December 6, he will be facing perhaps today's most popular boxer: Oscar de la Hoya.

Popular boxing analyst Larry Merchant said that should Pacquiao win, the Filipino would certainly leave his mark.

“Should he happen to win, it would mark him as one of the great fighters ever,” he said.

Boxing personalities Emmanuel Stewart and Bert Sugar also have their say on Pacquiao.

Stewart, who trained the likes of Thomas Hearns and Evander Holyfield, admired Pacquiao’s stamina in the ring.
 
“Manny Pacquiao throws hard punches from the first round to the last round,” he said.

For his part, boxing historian Sugar described the Filipino boxer a “performer”.

“Manny Pacquiao is exciting. Manny Pacquiao performs. And you know what? He's getting better with each fight,” he said.