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Source: Brad Cooney, Examiner

-- Usually when either I or some other boxing scribe writes an article about Floyd Mayweather or Manny Pacquiao, someone out there will ring in with some sort of racial comment and sooner or later someone always takes a cheap shot and says something to insult someone, or to insult anothers country of origin.

This writer has read several comments made by Pacquiao fans that speak about how Americans do not respect Asian fighters etc... With the arrival of the great Manny Pacquiao, and several other successful Filipino fighters, it's hard not to give respect to the Philippines.

America has a long history of great boxers that spreads across several weight divisions. For many years it was the American fighters that got most of the media play, and held most of the belts. This has changed over time, and with the explosion of Filipino fighters that have surfaced do to Pacquiao's success, one must respect the talent that comes out of the PI.

Recently while attending the fights in Tunica, Mississippi I was able to get some thoughts from some of the fans on how they view the fighters coming out of the Philippines. Most of them only heard of a few Filipino fighters, Pacquiao and Nonito Donaire. When I asked boxing fan Mike Kaplan of Jackson, MS what his thoughts on Filipino fighters was, he replied, "The only one that I heard of from The Philippines is Manny Pacquiao. He seems to be a great fighter, and seems pretty humble."

When I asked Felix Pace to share his thoughts on fighters from the Philippines, he replied, "I don't know much about Filipino fighters except for Manny Pacquiao. Manny sure can fight, and he seems like a down to earth person. When I saw him fight Miguel Cotto, he reminded me of that face hugger thing in that movie "Alien" where it launched across the room and attached to that dudes face. Pacquiao just launched across the ring and beat up Cotto's face something terrible."

Throughout my stops inside the casino in Tunica, I did not come across one American boxing fan that had anything negative to say about fighters from the Philippines. True enough that not many of them knew many Filipino fighters in the first place, but for those who knew Manny and Donaire, they had positive attitudes.