LAS VEGAS: On Tuesday, January 22 (Manila time) marks the exact 24th anniversary of Manny Pacquiao’s professional boxing career.

It was on that day in 1995 when a skinny 17-year-old boy from General Santos City in far away Mindanao, who only weighed 98 pounds, seven pounds under the required 105-pound to fight as a light-flyweight, that he had to put coins in his underwear to make the weight.