EXCLUSIVE JERRY JONES INTERVIEW: THANKS FOR MANNY
By Emmanuel Rivera, RRT
PhilBoxing.com
Sat, 13 Mar 2010
Arlington, Texas: "America's Team" chief Jerry Jones, the newly-minted boxing promoter, inaugurates the "billion, 200 million dollar" Dallas Cowboys Stadium in Texan style -- BIG dreams, BIGGER results.
Emmanuel "Manny" Pacquiao defends his WBO welterweight crown against Ghanian Joshua Clottey on March 13, Saturday, 9pm EST/6pmPST. "The Event" is available on PPV, Top Rank Promotions in association HBO PPV, Tecate Beer and Jerry Jones.
*Jerry Jones Interview (Part 1 of 2 on YouTube.com): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qq9U_gjIDmU
*Jerry thanks Filipinos (Part 2 of 2 on YouTube.com): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o1zy7_K1oqc
(Special thanks to interviewer Hermie Rivera and MP Promotions Videographer Levi Guttierez of BrianJon Productions)
A message to the Filipino people from Jerry Jones
"First of all, I want to thank you for the honor and privilege of sharing and having your favorite son open Cowboys Stadium. This, arguably, is one of the most visible venues that have ever been built. More people probably have an awareness of this stadium and will have it. It will be enhanced and has already been enhanced by the fact that Manny Pacquiao, a great Filipino, is fighting in it. So, thank you very much for sharing him with us and initiating him as the first big-time fighter to be featured in this stadium. In closing, come see it. Let's have him here again sometime, and all of you get over here and let's watch a great fight."
Q & A with Jerry Jones, Dallas Cowboys Proprietor
Rivera: How is it that you planned out the well-thought-of staging of one of the biggest if not the biggest fistic happenings?
Jerry Jones: First off, I had dreamed when we were designing that we could do boxing in this building. The Dallas Cowboys play American football here. In the middle of that star was designed a boxing ring and the idea of an event and 2 men fighting in the ring had everything to do with the (hi-def) board, the lowering of the board, the size of the board. Manny Pacquiao will be 72 feet high and will be perfectly synched and vividly portrayed right above it and every fan in here will see him in a way that's better than if you see him sitting at ringside. That was in our minds.
The other things is the capacity for football. I wanted a stadium that could allow a lot of people to come in that usually can't afford to come to NFL football games. That's what we're going to have here Saturday night for Manny. We're going to have a lot of people here that, otherwise, couldn't have come to Las Vegas. They couldn't have afforded the ticket. Yet, they will be in here, thousands of them, for a much less price--fifty dollars-- to come see a fighter like Manny whom they never would have watched live in their lifetimes once they he's reached this level of competition.
Rivera: The whole of our country the Philippines is grateful for your staging "The Event". From here on, what can we expect as far as big-time boxing is concerned?
Jerry Jones: I wish I could say that I've done this a lot. I haven't. I haven't run a stadium like this a lot. This is my first seven months on the job---as long it has been built. We really are feeling out how to do it. And we're going to get better at how we do it.
I would hope that on Saturday night the energy and the excitement of having forty-five thousand people and having the fight portrayed the way it is... I would hope that it would be something that would have boxing and sports fans everywhere talking about it.
If that happens, I don't know if we can have anybody in here with the stature of Manny but we're going to have more great fights. This stadium spent "a billion, two hundred million" and you cannot put anything but the best in here. It has to be really the best competitors, the best entertainment there is. If you don't, then there is something contradictory about that. And so, it lifts not only our fans being able to be here but it lifts the stature of Cowboys Stadium to have Manny Pacquiao be the first fighter here.
Rivera: Going to the fight itself, have we sold out?
Jerry Jones: Yes. We're down to the last 200 tickets. They told me this afternoon that we should be sold completely out and we got a decision to make to have an opportunity to do something we do with our NFL home games. At our football games, for instance, we have about thirty-two thousand people at our opening night that have stood (SRO) and watched the game specifically built in an area much like the platform we're in right now. Those staircases right there looking on the field and they were having more fun that the ones who have seats (winks).
Philboxing: Why are you a big fan of Manny Pacquiao?
Jerry Jones: It's the way he's set an example for all of us. That he's taken his gifts and he's maximized his gifts. And he didn't get here as the greatest fighter. He worked to become that. That's what I look for when I'm choosing football players for the Dallas Cowboys. I look for players that have talent and played at one level in their early years in college, but asked what and where is it within them that appears or attempt to be something special. Manny represents that. Everybody understands that in the Philippines.
I understand it. You can take that ingredient and take it out of the ring. You can put it in Congress or any place you want to and it's going to knock 'em dead. It's good stuff no matter what you do.
Philboxing: Is there a particular fight that got you thinking, "I gotta follow this fighter"?
Jerry Jones: The last fight (Cotto). I had a keen interest because I was zeroing in on Manny and Mayweather. So I was keenly interested in how that took off and when he finished off that thing... I was really pumped.
Philboxing: Can you tell us a little bit about who Jerry Jones is and how he became to be the owner of America's Team the Dallas Cowboys?
Jerry Jones: I never thought that I could be involved on this basis. I've always loved sports and had a tremendous passion for it. My father chastised... I've read articles of him saying my daughter's going to be alright, but my boy is not going to amount to anything. All he wants to do is talk about sports and football. But the bottom line is I got a great coaching in the sense of life from my mother and dad. They really gave me a serious lesson when I was inordinately young. They would create incentives for me...if we're selling watermelons or Christmas trees I got a little piece of selling those around our business.
Sitting around the breakfast table I really got oriented to doing the things I'm doing today. It's just a pleasure to have a background like that. It gave me a lot of confidence. You don't make your mind up to do something the day it shows up. You really have to have seen yourself a lot of times doing that so that when it comes by you'll grab it. And I must tell you, I've seen myself owning the Cowboys and the team for a long time.
* * *
"The Event" on March 13, Saturday, 9pm EST/6pmPST.
Available on PPV, Top Rank Promotions in association HBO PPV, Tecate Beer and Jerry Jones.
Click here to view a list of other articles written by Emmanuel Rivera, RRT.
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