FROM the hardcore fan to the passing cynic Manny Pacquiao is the one universally recognisable figure who represents the lurid, irresistible charm of the fight game.
At a time when the showcase heavyweight division is devalued by squabbling between David Haye and the Klitschko brothers, who between the three of them share four versions of the world title, Pacquiao towers over his sport, all 168cm of him.
He has won world titles at eight weights, the best little big man in boxing since Henry ??Homicide Hank?? Armstrong, who ruled three weights simultaneously in the 1930s. Perhaps he is better. Boxing historians also compare him to the Welshman of long ago, Jimmy ??The Mighty Atom?? Wilde, a flyweight who knocked big men out for fun.
The PacMan is a fighter to remind fans what the sport once was like and still can be, a fighter unafraid of anyone, no matter the size or reputation.
His b?te noire, Floyd Mayweather Jr, will dispute Pacquiao?s pre-eminence. Mayweather is a pure boxer, one of the best of all time, and has generated enormous money for himself and others, his marketability sustained by an eccentric ego and outlandish lifestyle. There is a key difference between them: Pacquiao is an old-fashioned warrior burdened neither by ego nor bad manners.
Bob Arum, Pacquiao?s promoter, met suggestions that Pacquiao might even fight boxing?s latest one-punch sensation, the 35-year-old world middleweight champion, Sergio Martinez (who would outweigh him by at least 11kg), with wry humour.
??I?ve got the greatest fighter of all-time,?? Arum said, ??but I don?t have superman.??
Too many people think he is. He has punished his wiry body, in training and in victory, for 15 years, never more so, he says, than in his most recent win, a 12-round battering of Antonio Margarito in Texas in November.
The Mexican outweighed Pacquiao by almost 8kg and gave as good as he got before succumbing to the unavoidable energy of his little tormentor. Margarito left the ring with a grotesquely damaged right eye that required emergency surgery. He will never be the same fighter, if, indeed, he boxes again.
Pacquiao has already finished the careers of Oscar De La Hoya and Ricky Hatton and dismissed wild speculation last month that he might grant them a rematch. There is no question that Pacquiao is the eye of boxing?s storm.
At the height of the Filipino?s power and celebrity, however, there is a danger he is being pushed to the limit of his abilities to shore up his steadily draining fortune, not to mention those of others.
He has earned more than $60m from his past three fights alone, and as much as $40m from 14 other world-title contests of varying credence over 12 years. But his lavish and indiscriminate spending is causing his many boxing and business advisers serious concern.
The American writer Gary Andrew Poole, in a new book, PacMan, Behind The Scenes with Manny Pacquiao, the Greatest Pound-for-Pound Fighter in the World, describes a man of complex and fierce beliefs, who gives away so much money and in such random fashion that few among his confidants can keep track of it.
In a society where quick and violent death is commonplace, there are unique signs of his benevolence in the Philippines. ??Free coffins courtesy of Manny Pacquiao,?? was one roadside sign Poole saw during his research.
Pacquiao pays to bury the dead of those killed in the serial outbreaks between warring factions. He buys hospital beds and school supplies. He provides seed money for businesses and any crackpot money-making idea that comes his way. Until recently, anyone who turned up at his house asking for money was accommodated.
His birthday parties, lavish affairs in General Santos City, attract many thousands, and they are all fed and watered by the birthday boy.
Pacquiao is the fourth of six children from a family who struggled against poverty in Bukidnon, in the southern collection of islands of the country. His father famously walked out after eating the family dog and Manny left for General Santos City where he discovered boxing, basketball and street smarts.
He is married to Jinky, a diminutive ever-presence at ringside, and they christened the fourth of their children Queen Elizabeth, reflecting his admiration of the royal family.
However, his sainthood came under pressure last year when he had to ward off allegations that he was having an affair with a local movie star, Krista Ranillo. Jinky was subsequently seen in tears at a Thanksgiving Mass.
He loves cock-fighting, horse-fighting and he carries a gun, with an arsenal of 100 M16s at his house, according to Poole, as well as a small battalion of 30 security guards, who lurk in the shadows at every public appearance.
They are intensely loyal. It does not bear thinking about how far they would go to protect their hero.
Pacquiao might look like a choirboy, but he has survived all the challenges that a robust culture has thrown at him since the day he left home at the age of 14 to earn a living in the streets.
A product of his environment, Pacquiao remains a prisoner of it, too. During his preparation for the Margarito fight, trainer Freddie Roach complained daily that he struggled to keep his fighter?s focus on the fight. He left training camp once for an audience with the president, travelling five hours each way.
Pacquiao has a controversial financial adviser, the Canadian Michael Koncz, who does not often please Roach or Arum. Koncz sees himself as the fighter?s eyes and ears. But Pacquiao has many such friends, hundreds of them, who make the most unusual entourage in sport. They follow him everywhere, paid for by Manny, of course, and sometimes a few of them will even sleep at the foot of his bed.
The focus of his life, though, has shifted from boxing to politics. He might one day run for president, unlikely as that might seem for someone who left school at the age of 10 and who only recently graduated from high school. But there seems little he cannot achieve, in boxing or life, whatever his eccentric methods and beliefs.
He was not expected to win in the elections last May, because it was felt Filipinos did not want him to harm his reputation by entering the polluted world of politics.
Yet so far he has risen above the mire. Whether he continues to do so might be his biggest fight. Whatever the confusion and tribulations of his personal and public life, the non-negotiable element of the Pacquiao story is: how much more can he endure in the boxing ring?
Pacquiao suffered horribly in beating Margarito and said he had never absorbed such punishment in 57 fights.
At 31, he is nearing the edge of his resistance, especially against bigger opponents. Roach, who has said ??Manny is a monster, the best fighter ever??, hints he will not fight for much longer, maybe three fights, maybe two.
Titles and associated honours have flowed Manny?s way like honey: fighter of the decade, pound-for-pound best in the world, one of Time magazine?s 100 most influential people in the world and honorary baubles from universities. While he appreciates them, he is not easily flattered.
And now it is money, not accolades, that Congressman Pacquiao needs. Not even the best fighter in the world can escape the raison d??tre of prizefighting ? nor the over-weaning supplication of his people.
Pacquiao?s annual earnings of $42m to May last year, according to Forbes Magazine, put him eighth in world sport behind Tiger Woods ($105m), Mayweather ($64m), Kobe Bryant ($48m), Phil Mickelson ($46m), David Beckham ($43.7m), Roger Federer ($43m) and LeBron James ($42.8m).
He made $35m from his fights against Miguel Cotto and Joshua Clottey before spending $7m on his election campaign in that month.
There will be much spending to come. So the absorbing sub-text is: who will make that money with him? The fight public want just one man, Mayweather, but he is not only proving difficult for Arum to deal with. He had to answer a slew of domestic violence charges and might be removed from the equation indefinitely.
Arum wanted Sugar Shane Mosley, who conveniently happens to be one of his clients (the fight has been booked for May 7 in Las Vegas). This throws up an interesting moral dilemma, if there is such a thing in boxing. Mayweather recently lowered the tone of the debate yet again when he said Pacquiao had never been tested by an African-American fighter, someone whose slick style would confound him. Mosley is such a fighter ? and Arum answered charges of playing the race card in characteristically robust fashion: ??I?m aware of that fact. I agree that it might come up.??
But what is the secret to Pacquiao?s phenomenal success? Mayweather suggests it is enhanced by drugs, an allegation yet to be tested in the courts. Still the little man?s ability to carry his power up from 48kg as a 16-year-old, when he made his professional debut in the Philippines, to light-middleweight in November (which, incidentally, Mayweather has also done), raises some eyebrows.
Roach, Pacquaio and the world light-welterweight champion Amir Khan, his training partner in Los Angeles, credit their conditioning and nutritional coach, Alix Ariza, with devising a 5000-calories-a-day regime that makes severe demands on their work rate in the gym. It has turned them into outrageously strong fighters.
Pacquiao, not the most technically proficient fighter at elite level, has improved his skills, too. They used to call it the old one-two: a jab and a cross, one following the other so quickly that the combination arrives almost as a single blow. It is the building block of boxing and it is Pacquiao?s simple secret to success.
During his dismantling of Margarito, Pacquiao often threw the old one-two in clusters of three, creating a blur of half a dozen punches that confused the bigger man. It was the legacy of a lot of work supervised by Roach before the Hatton fight 20 months ago. Until then Pacquiao had been too reliant on his killer left hook. Roach noticed that Hatton was open to a right hand, however, and worked on that punch relentlessly. The result is a near-complete, two-handed champion.
Glenn McCrory was at the Margarito fight. He has seen all there is to see, inside the ring as a world champion and outside as a commentator. He said of the experience: ??Words can hardly explain what it was like. I?ve been covering the sport for 24 years and I think that will go down as one of my best nights.??
Adam Booth, who trains the WBA heavyweight champion Haye, put it another way: ??Manny Pacquiao?s getting to that stage where none of us is qualified to pass an opinion on him. He?s becoming that impressive. That?s the best Manny Pacquiao has ever looked. He?s a freak and he defies all logic.??
When Pacquiao joined Roach at his Wild Card gym in Hollywood eight years ago he told a reporter from the Philippines: ??I am the storm from across the Pacific.??
And so he is.
But Pacquiao is more than a fighter. He plays the piano, untutored, sings (enthusiastically), has starred in movies in his homeland and has plans to break into Hollywood with Sylvester Stallone. He is wildly superstitious and a rank hypochondriac, fearless of fists but scared of needles.
Above all, he is a man for his people, who has not forgotten his impoverished, straw-shack roots, and he is determined to help them in whatever way he can within a system that is riven by corruption and killing.
He is also a practising Catholic, like millions of Filipinos. But even some of them were perplexed when, earlier this year, Pacquiao claimed he had seen God. It is not recorded if God had seen Pacquiao.
