As Manny Pacquiao was preparing for the second of what would be three fights against Erik Morales, boxing writers around the world were puzzled by a news release they'd received from Pacquiao publicist Fred Sternburg.
Sternburg's release was meant to help promote the HBO Pay-Per-View bout, and it delivered news and notes about Pacquiao's work in training camp. At that point, Pacquiao still hadn't broken through to stardom in the U.S., and Sternburg was vastly better known as Winky Wright's publicist than as Pacquiao's.
Pacquiao was so little known in the U.S. that prior to his first fight with Morales, he sat with me talking one-on-one wearing a red track suit with the McDonald's logo on it. The room was filled with boxing writers and other boxing people, and no one disturbed us as we spoke. Pacquiao's English at the time was poor, and we were having difficulty communicating.
I made a snarky comment about him wearing a track suit promoting McDonald's. Looking at Pacquiao's physique, it was clear he wasn't making regular visits to the fast-food giant.
"You don't eat that shit!" I said to Pacaquiao, who laughed and insisted he did.
He lost the fight when he was cut and while it was an entertaining bout, he still wasn't anywhere near residing in the upper echelon of stars in boxing.
Then came the Morales rematch, and Sternburg was filling the inboxes of reporters with tales of "Manila Ice, this secret punch that Pacquiao and Freddie Roach were (supposedly) working on. I knew it was a gimmick, because I knew Sternburg and his sense of humor. But he didn't know Pacquiao like he'd eventually come to know him, and Pacquiao wasn't much forthcoming.
Sternburg was trying to sell the fight, but there wasn't much Pacquiao-related to go on other than that the first fight was outstanding.
"I had nothing!" Sternburg said, chuckling, as he spoke to keviniole.com a day after he was elected to the International Boxing Hall of Fame.
Thus was created Manila Ice. I saw the legendary HBO broadcaster Larry Merchant during fight week. He knew I had a close relationship with Sternburg. I was with two other reporters and Merchant asked if we had any idea what Manila Ice was referencing. I knew it was just a way Sternburg was using to get people talking about and thus interested in, the fight.
Media bought it hook, liner and sinker. On the day before a fight, the broadcasters and the production team will meet with the fighters and their coaches to gather information they can use for the broadcast. When Pacquiao arrived for his sitdown, a large part of the topic was Manila Ice. Pacquiao didn't even know Sternburg had come up with that gimmick, and he kept denying whenever one of the broadcasters would ask him whether it was a right hook, or a left uppercut, or whatever.
It was simply a product of Sternburg's fertile imagination and a way he came up with to sell a fight when he didn't have much information or a client he could communicate with.
Sternburg's election was met with resounding good cheer throughout the boxing industry, because he's not only the greatest publicist in boxing history, but he's also one of its good guys.
Whenever someone lost a family member, or had someone with an illness, Sternburg would not only donate money but he'd spread information and asked his contacts to support the person in need.
When writers lost jobs, Sternburg would call everyone he knew looking for a way to help.
He was always in a good mood, always helpful, always professional and unmatched in terms of creativity, doggedness and ingenuity.
Thom Loverro was a long-time sports reporter at The Washington Times who came to know Sternburg when Sternburg lived in the area. One of Sternburg's clients then was a middle-of-the-road fighter named Derrell "Too Sweet" Coley. He was a welterweight in the era of Oscar De La Hoya, Ike Quartey, Pernell Whitaker and Felix Trinidad.
Sternburg was trying to create awareness for Coley to help him get a bout with Whitaker, the legendary champion who was still by that point among the best pound-for-pound fighters in the world. Whitaker was fighting for HBO, so Sternburg mounted a postcard campaign for Coley. Thousands of postcards were sent to media and others in boxing, a move that significantly raised Coley's profile.
Next-to-no one outside of the D.C. area knew Coley prior.
"They wound up getting an AP story and a USA Today article about Coley," Loverro said. "Now, every boxing media member knew who he was. Coley didn't get the fight with Whitaker, but he did get a Madison Square Garden main event against Oscar De La Hoya and the big payday that came with it. There were many Derrell Coley-types of fighters in cities across the country, [but] Fred made sure everyone knew about [the one in] his."
Jerry Izenberg is on on the Mount Rushmore of great sports columnists in the U.S. after a lengthy career with the Newark Star-Ledger. Now 93 and living in Henderson, Nevada, Izenberg still occasionally writes for the Star-Ledger, and they're still incredible reads. But he's now writing books and Sternburg works as his publicist.
Izenberg's last book was called "Baseball, Nazis & Nedick's Hot Dogs: Growing up Jewish in the 1930s in Newark." I read it -- at Sternburg's insistence -- and it's fantastic. Sternburg has an amazing amount of contacts, but even those he doesn't know, he manages to reach.
One of his goals was to get a review about the book in every Jewish newspaper in the U.S. He managed to do that, but that was only part of what he accomplished.
"Fred said we should try to get a review and then get it syndicated and put in all of the Jewish newspapers around the country," Izenberg said. "So there is this news agency, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that goes all around this country and around the world. ... So Fred just doesn't quit and he worked on this and not only did the book show up in all of the Jewish newspapers like he said, but he also got me into the Jerusalem Post. Do you know how difficult that is? It's an enormous accomplishment. I never thought he could do that, but Fred is a guy who knows his business like nobody else and he gets things done that no one else can do."
Sternburg helped with a number of Sugar Ray Leonard fights as an employee of the highly regarded Charlie Brotman in Washington, D.C. On his own, he did p.r. for fighters like Pacquiao, Gennadiy Golovkin, Wright, Joe Calzaghe, David Reid and David Tua.
Each of them became higher profile after having worked with Sternburg. Wright, in particular, was an unknown who grew to prominence because Sternburg worked so hard on his behalf. He is now trainer Freddie Roach's publicist.
There are plenty more stories, but the message is always the same:
Fred Sternburg is the best.
Never was there a more deserving inductee into the International Boxing Hall of Fame than this man.
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