HOLLYWOOD, California – After his brilliant perfomance last Saturday at the Dallas Cowboy Stadium claiming a record eighth world weight-class title by annihilating Antonio Margarito via a unanimous decision, Emmanuel “Manny” D. Dapidran Pacquiao keeps his composure nearly untouched by the pressures he gets from being one of the top personalities of the world. He senses what his victory and inspiration would bring to his impoverished Maharlikan nation and to the healing for the less inspired regardless of social disparity and racial identity. He has become a ‘world icon’, so to speak, of all time in the sport of boxing and inevitably beyond.
In the days before his scheduled fight against Margarito and as he jogged in the hills of Hollywood, he knew for sure what he had lost and gained out there, some more than 8,000 miles away deep in the hinterlands of the third world country, out there along the streets of General Santos City more than fifteen years ago and there before in his formative years. Pacquiao drifted to losing the pride of oneself from the devastating evils of poverty and at the same time lifted his spirit by gaining the faith that he would forever treasure particulary from his wakefulness when he heard that ‘super-natural voice’ inspiring his desire to please the boxing fans around the world and to give honor to his countrymen.
From the roof that offered segments to view the starry skies of that rebel infested region of Mindanao, if not just drops of blood upon the miasma in the rainforest or quite expectedly drops of rain when the weather seemed either kind or unkind, and from the sighs at dawn of his mother, Dionisia, who somehow cared less but for the survival of her family from the bondage of almost nothingness, Pacquiao’s inimitable persona would be enough to crack open the formidable collision between moralistic stupidity and fearless regard to each moment he envisioned. Less forgotten for the moment was not only the long history of how the estimated 92 million people of the Philippines, the world’s 12th most populous country, become jubilant each time he wins a fight in recent years, notwithstanding the more inspired additional 11 million Filipinos who live overseas. In their minds, they watched Pacquiao stories all unfolding before them and read more stories about him as though he were once their close friend, as though he were still in the personal “life-movie” that his life has become.
Pacquiao completed his elementary education at Saavedra Saway Elementary School in General Santos City, but dropped out of high school due to extreme poverty. Then, he left his home at age 14 because his mother, who had six children, was not making enough money to support her family. It was then that Manny Pacquiao would have to engage the dehumanizing aspects of boxing. In the ring, he was feisty as ever, gutsy and combative with an enterprising fire and a spirit of sportmanship and religious fortitude.
“Manny (sic) is really tough and has no fear and he works so hard even in his young years,” said Mang Ben who was Pacquiao’s first boxing trainer. “And he is a very religious kid. He always gives offering to the nuns somewhere in Manila even if he fails to win a fight.”
Just when this writer met Pacquiao here in Los Angeles before his fight against Lehlohonolo Ledwaba on June 23, 2001, the same personality bedecked in his rugged sweat shirt and blue jeans up to this date, brought to light in rare humility. Pex Aves, a noted political crusader and commentator during the era of former and now-deceased Ferdinand E. Marcos, knew that there was more to him than just the bruises Pacquiao got from his opponents’ punches and jabs.
“He is a very religious fighter. But, he hits his opponents in the ring a murderous shot and then say ‘Nothing is personal. It’s just my job to fight for a living,” said Aves who used to pick up Pacquiao at the Los Angeles International Airport each time he came to prepare for a potential fight arrangement in the US.
And almost a decade since then, Pacquiao by far exhibits the same character: A fighter who never leaves his enemy without extending mercy and grace – a class of act rarely seen among athletes in blood sport.
Pacquiao also felt the pressures that potentially go with winning and losing. Never forgotten was his performance as life, and life as performance, both public and private. He may have more winnings and losings outside of the ring of madness. Whenever he was hurt from boxing, he confined to nobody, not even to painkiller pills, but to the Most High. Being a daredevil fighter, he enjoyed expanding his contacts even to the point of engulfing himself in the unknown world of the scoundrels, sycophants and some numskul politicians, loving the glazed feeling when he hardly knew where such leads him, even to the moment of walking in on his someone’s terms in full trust and confidence but less for himself unknowingly at times, which most dishonest would hunt such opportunity.
Meanwhile, as of this writing, a terrible pulling and hauling and an aweful straining beneath the artifice of Pacquiao being a celebrity all harken him for presidential prospect twelve years from now in the Philippine electoral process. All these presumptive push could function within the context of popularity and pure fame.
Will the Filipinos be prepared to work out together with Pacquiao beyond the consuming crisis of their lives?
TO BE CONTINUED in a series of fifty: “The Zen of Emmanuel D. Pacquiao: Boxer, Entertainer, Actor and Builder of Faith”
