They might be boxing’s oddest couple, Manny Pacquiao and Sean Gibbons, formally the Senator and the President. Not that Gibbons is pulling rank on the future Hall of Famer.

“I guess it's a title,” Gibbons laughs. “But I'm a little more humble because with my beginnings in Knucklehead Boxing in Oklahoma, I always find it weird when someone asks for a picture or calls me a title. I'm just a guy who got a few breaks in life and has taken advantage of it.”

Last Friday, Gibbons was running late, having just been at Los Angeles’ Griffith Park with Pacquiao, his training squad, and over 200 of their closest friends.

“The man signed 75 autographs at least, people waiting in line for an hour after his run,” said Gibbons of Pacquiao, who is in training for his August 21 bout against Errol Spence Jr. “He's contagious. He tells you always, ‘Just stay humble, believe in God,’ and just being around him, my life the last few years, I'll never be able to achieve this level of boxing again around someone like this. It doesn't happen in many lifetimes, and there's no one that pulls people like he does again from all parts of the world. Canelo (Alvarez) is great in certain areas. Anthony Joshua in certain areas. This guy is like a David Beckham type wherever he goes. That's why you'll never hear me down, complaining, moaning, even though there's so much stuff that goes on, and bad stuff in boxing and people trying to screw you. I've just come to realize that you just do the things you can do and do them right, and the rest of the stuff will fall into place.”

If it sounds like a victory lap for the 54-year-old Gibbons, maybe it is, given his journey through the sport and his status as one of the few “real” boxing guys left. Of course, depending on who you talk to, the “real” part could be a positive or a negative, as the sweet science has always been the wild west of professional sports. Gibbons found that out at the start under the wing of his uncle Pat O’Grady, father of future world champion Sean O’Grady. Back then, boxing looked a lot different than it does now, and the “real” boxing people specialized in being jacks of all trades.

“I’m coming from setting up the ring, to making the matches, to handling everything from A to Z, driving fighters all over the U.S.,” said Gibbons, who also fought professionally, compiling a 14-7-3 record that included a draw with Mickey Rourke and losses to the likes of Alex Ramos and Ruediger May. “Guys like myself, Pete Susens, Bruce Trampler, we all started that way. We all started at the very bottom, hauling fighters around the U.S., doing club shows.” 

It’s a far cry from the packed arenas Pacquiao fights in with the spotlight at its brightest. But that’s where the sport was always built, where young fighters learned their trade, journeymen gave them the work they needed, and fans fell in love with the hardest game. Unfortunately, those days, if not gone already, are going fast.

“When you look at the foundation of boxing - club shows were the foundation,” said Gibbons. “That's what built fighters. Red Fortner in Tennessee, Pat O'Grady in Oklahoma, Peyton Sher in Kansas City. You had all these different promoters in these states, and between them quitting and commissions just getting too much regulation, you've lost that real club show feeling. And building up guys, that's what you need. You always need your opponents coming up to oppose your good guys. When I was in the Midwest from '85 to '97, we averaged over a hundred shows a year all over in every state imaginable. That was definitely a different era of what we used to do, and it's just not there anymore.”

The men and women working in that era were a different breed as well. They worked in the shadows, far from the spotlight, but if you were in the business or covering the sport, you knew who they were, and talking to them gave you an education that you couldn’t find in a book or a classroom. It was Sweet Science 101, and while it wasn’t always sweet, it was always real. 

“I was lucky to come up with Pat O'Grady, I was lucky to come up with Johnny Bos,” said Gibbons. “Johnny Bos sent me to more places in Denmark and Germany and England. (Laughs) Johnny was my booking agent and an educator. When I'd go to New York, you didn't go to the fights unless you visited KO JO (Jack Obermayer) and Jowett Boy (Jeff Jowett), Harold Lederman, and Johnny. These were guys that grinded. This is what they did. They were in it every day. They weren't fans with a phonebook. They weren't some guy getting a number from Facebook or Instagram and calling your fighters up. They built up guys, they developed guys, they promoted shows.” 

Gibbons chuckles, noting how things have changed.

“What drives me nuts in boxing today is all these bozos that say, ‘Oh, I'm in boxing.’” 

“What do you do?” 

“I book fights. I just started because I like boxing and then I got some numbers, and I went to some fights.” 

“Did you ever put your money into it, did you ever build a fighter, you ever promote a show, you ever drive a guy 24 hours from Oklahoma to Montana to do a show?” 

“No.” 

“The real hardcore guys,” Gibbons continues, “The fun guys, the characters, the Flash Gordons, are legendary.”

And sadly, most are gone. Gibbons fights on, though, figuratively, not literally, as he threw his last punch for pay in 1996. A year later, he left Oklahoma for Las Vegas.

“When I left Oklahoma in ‘97 and moved to Vegas, it wasn't fun anymore, so well, I might as well get a real job,” he said. “(In Oklahoma) It was over-regulations and commissions trying to destroy it and people wanting to take over and it just made it so difficult to really promote shows the way you did. And that's one of the reasons I moved on from where I was at that time and went to Las Vegas and went to work for Top Rank.”

Gibbons had a good run at Top Rank until he was let go in 2004 on the heels of the FBI’s Operation Match Book probe, which focused on alleged fight fixing. There were similar allegations made in Oklahoma, yet Gibbons wasn’t charged with any criminal wrongdoing in either case and he landed on his feet with Sycuan Ringside Promotions, where he stayed for five years.

“We had five world champs at one time - Celestino Caballero, Carlos Baldomir, Julio Diaz, Israel Vazquez and Joan Guzman,” said Gibbons, who went back to his first love – Knucklehead Boxing – in 2009 when Sycuan left the boxing business. 

In the ensuing years, Gibbons struck up a friendship with Pacquiao and began working with fighters the Filipino icon asked him to help. That working relationship grew to the point where Gibbons was named president of MP Promotions, and after Pacquiao’s win over Lucas Matthysse in 2018, he suggested that the senator’s next stop should be to Al Haymon and PBC.

“I told him, Floyd Mayweather's there, you're there, Al's there, so it's easy to make,” said Gibbons. “The idea was, when we signed with PBC, was to potentially do the second Mayweather fight. Unfortunately, one guy was going the other way and one guy was going up still. We did the (Adrien) Broner fight, Mayweather came, took a look at it and he's like, ‘Okay.’ And then when Manny left Keith Thurman in Mayweather's lap almost in the first round, he couldn't get out of the building quick enough.”

Gibbons laughs, and while it was disappointing that the Mayweather rematch didn’t happen, Pacquiao has not just stayed busy, but he’s winning relevant fights and is about to engage in another one.

“The treatment he got with PBC, the fights he got were the right fights and the fight against Keith Thurman, to me, still goes down as one of the greatest welterweight wins, and I say that because of the age. 40 years old is phenomenal to still be able to have skills at this weight,” said Gibbons. 

But will Pacquiao still have them at 42 in less than two weeks? You know Gibbons’ answer to that question.

“Four years ago, he was written off,” said Gibbons. “Now he's back on top of the game, and I feel very good to have been a part of that and a part of that legacy. The rest of it will be written on August 21st. If he wins, it will go down as the greatest moment in welterweight history for me and, for the senator, the biggest win of his career by far.”

Not bad for a kid from Oklahoma who just loved boxing. Now, his quotes fill papers in the Philippines, and he’s become as much of a fixture in the Pacquiao camp as Freddie Roach and Buboy Fernandez.

“It's all surreal in ways,” said Gibbons, who doesn’t shy away from the spotlight but doesn’t call it his favorite thing, either. The way he’s always seen it is that the fighter is the star of the show. The rest are the details left to guys like him.

“I like being on the computer, working the phone, getting things organized for the guys to go out and do what they do. I'm just Knucklehead Sean from Oklahoma. But I do have to be careful in ways that I am representing the senator. I can't go out and do something absurd or whatever and pull his name down with it. I keep to who I am, I stay to my roots. I've always been cool and humble, a few people - the FBI and a few other people – have tried to drag me down, but I always believe in treating the janitor and the CEO the same, and that makes things easier.”