Manny Pacquiao once lived rough and scraped together money for his family selling doughnuts on street corners. Now he stops a nation when he boxes, has the ear of presidents, stars in movies and has a grand piano in his living room.
Pacquiao’s rise has been phenomenal. Tomorrow he challenges Miguel Cotto for the WBO welterweight title at the MGM Grand Garden here, aiming to cement his place in the sport’s history books.
Victory would give Pacquiao a world title in a sixth weight division, an incredible run up the divisions for a boxer who started as a light-flyweight.
But his story outside the ring is equally astonishing. Today he lives in a presidential-style mansion in General Santos City in the Philippines, only miles from the streets where he grew up in poverty.
The dire financial situation in the country means that his home is surrounded by armed guards, but the multimillionaire inside has not forgotten his roots. He has given millions to charity and wants to run for Congress to improve the lot of his people. Pacquiao says he wants to help the people; Bob Arum, his promoter, calls him the Filipino welfare system.
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“Here’s a guy who has come from an essentially Third World country, but he has become a world figure,” Arum said. “He can deal with statespeople and people say how well he handled himself when he met President Clinton.
“I have never seen anything like the adulation that he is treated by Filipinos and all over the world. That is something that even [Muhammad] Ali never even really had — that type of frenzy, with 90 million people in the Philippines and 11 million Filipino people around the world.”
In politics, Pacquiao is likely to be a uniting force. When he faces Cotto, life will stop in his homeland, even the skirmishes between government forces and Islamic insurgents.
Pacquiao, 30, often needs police escorts to move around. Everywhere he goes, Filipinos throng to catch a glimpse of the small man with the ever-present smile. He and his wife, Jinkee, have four children, the youngest born last year, a daughter they named Queen Elizabeth. But his life is not confined to boxing or politics. In his homeland he sings on television — and breeds fighting cocks.
While cockfighting is repellent to many and illegal in some countries, in the Philippines it remains a popular pastime. Large crowds gather to watch and bet on the fights and Pacquiao’s presence, whether he is sponsoring a fight or owns one of the contestants, ensures a capacity crowd.
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Although described by a friend as “a terrible actor”, he has appeared in several films and spent last summer filming one called Wapakman, in which he played a masked superhero. It is due out in the Philippines this month.