The name of The New York Times newspaper resounds with great respect in my Eastern European country Bulgaria. The edition is known around the world as one of the top sources of information and interesting articles.

A month ago, Sam Broden, the European sports correspondent of The NY Times, approached me via e-mail. He wanted to make an article about the great Bulgarian boxer Serafim Todorov. The reason is upcoming May 2 bout between Floyd Mayweather and Manny Pacquiao. The noise around the super-fight is enormous, so every reporter in USA is looking for some interesting angle.

Serafim was the last man who beat Floyd during their semifinal bout at Atlanta Games. The fate for both of them was quite different after this fate. Mayweather is the most earning sportsman on the planet, while Todorov is living with 400 euros monthly pension.

Sam Broden needed a fixer, who would arrange some interview meeting with Serafim and his coaches. After the initial e-mail of Sam, I received some other requests from sports journalist representing USA Today and Sky Sports. They wanted to do the same article, but Sam was the first one to connect so my ethics were clear: I would work only with NY Times for the story.

It was great experience. My American colleague Sam came to Bulgaria with a photographer, named Judi, who is sharing her time between my country and Turkey. She shot some very nice pictures of Serafim, his family and his coach.

We’ve got some hurdles to overcame along the way as my 20-year-old Volkswagen Golf broke down at the highway, but we reach our destination and we did the interview. I felt ashamed by the travel incident, but as Sam said these kind of things happen.

The article was published on Saturday’s edition of The New York Times and was re-posted and reprinted all around the world. Sam was kind enough to mention me as contributor for the story. It’s always nice to see how different is the working process in another country.

For the consecutive time I was wondering to myself why I didn’t put some more efforts during my school days to learn English in order to express better in writing. Even now, when I am writing the current post, I must stop in the middle of the sentence to think about if my grammar or spelling is correct. Well, the good point is that I continue to learn, even at the age of 34. Let’s hope that in few years I will be able to put my thoughts on English in more elegant way.