After weeks of debate, April Entona finally decided to join her sister and brother-in-law to watch fellow Filipino Manny Pacquaio fight in Cowboys Stadium. So the day before the bout, she told her bosses someone would have to cover her nursing shift - in Chicago.
Lloyd Damian was so looking forward to this fight that he designed his own Pacquaio T-shirt. But it wasn't until Thursday that he decided to come - from Elizabeth, New Jersey.
Then there was the group of about 50 people wearing yellow, red and green, jumping up and down and singing one chant after another. They came from Baltimore, New York, Oklahoma and throughout Texas, and are all originally from Ghana, the homeland of Pacquiao's foe Joshua Clottey.
Notice the trend?
Promoters took this show on the road - away from Las Vegas and into an NFL stadium, with plenty of seats, plus $35 standing-room-only tickets - and 50,994 people came from all over just to be part of the action Saturday night.
Initially, 45,000 tickets were put on sale. The standing-room-only tickets were made available Friday.
Sure, not every seat was great. But with the world's largest high-definition televisions looming overhead, everyone felt close to the action.
``Everything is open, you can see it all right in front of you,'' said 15-year-old Yonsy Alvarez, watching from one of the highest, farthest spots.
``We've been walking around, watching from different points, and it's better right here,'' said his father, Jose Alvarez, who spent all day driving from his job in Minnesota so he could bring his son to the bout.
Then Yonsy started talking about his budding boxing career, mentioning that he trains at the same gym as one of the guys on the undercard. Just when he was predicting that in three years people will be coming to see him fight in that ring down there, two women from the stadium's guest services department showed up.
``Would you like to be relocated to better seats?'' they asked. The Alvarez family was soon headed to section 110, about the equivalent of the 50-yard line, in the lowest section above the floor.
As they were headed down, up walked Damian, a 27-year-old specialist in the Army who is back from two tours in Iraq, and his buddy, Leo Binaday of Jersey City, N.J.. Both wore T-shirts that read, ``Just Doing My JAB,'' with a Pac-man character for the ``o'' and a large image of Pacquiao.
``I made the shirts just to watch at home,'' Damian said. ``Then we figured we might as well go.''
They decided on Thursday. They took care of the logistics Friday and were walking around Saturday night wide-eyed and smiling, taking pictures and videos of everything they saw on their way to section 322. They never made it, rerouted by another complimentary upgrade.
Although the main event still two hours away, the crowd soon erupted in the kind of cheer usually heard when the Cowboys score a touchdown. It was an in-house shot of Pacquiao entering the building, drawing chants of ``Man-ny! Man-ny!'' from thousands of fans.
Some of it, however, was drowned by chants of ``Clot-tey! Clot-tey!'' from the Ghana group.
The back-and-forth was friendly and quite colorful, the red, white and blue flags of the Philippines waving alongside the Ghana flag. Most of the Ghana folks wore shirts and hats featuring their flag, some wearing flags as capes.
When they stopped saying Clottey's name, they broke into all sorts of cheers.
``Most of these are prayer songs: `God is with us and we thank God,''' said Grace Baidoo, who organized the group. ``When you go to soccer matches, this is what you hear.''
Baidoo spent about a month getting her group together, some coming all the way from Ghana. She said there were about 300 people in all, but they couldn't get a block of seats together so they were spread out.
On this fight night, about the only thing missing were Hollywood heavyweights sitting ringside.
Instead, there were the kind of stars you'd expect from this venue: Jimmy Johnson, Troy Aikman, Tony Dorsett and the Cowboys Cheerleaders.
Fans didn't seem too interested in the undercard, even in the final fights among accomplished boxers. The proof? They started the wave. It roared around the stadium several times, building up speed long before dying out.
