Manny Pacquiao?s return journey to Las Vegas has taken him via Jimmy Kimmel?s chat show on American television, where he was joined on camera by Bill Clinton.
The former US president not only expressed his unbounded admiration of the PacMan as a boxer but endorsed him as a future leader of the Philippines.
The man standing in the way of the first of those ambitions sees that celebrity shoulder-rubbing as further reason why he will beat the legendary Pacquiao for a second time in the MGM Grand Garden.
Tim Bradley, the defending WBO welterweight champion, says: ?Manny is not as hungry as he used to be. He?s lost the fire.?
Bradley would be unwise to rely too much on his suspicion that Pacquiao has gone into decline since he was awarded a quite scandalous points victory over him in their first fight.
Or that the PacMan?s political duties as a senator and champion of the poor in his country are such a distraction that he has lost a vital measure of his interest in proving himself one of the greatest fighters of his generation.
Pacquiao, although respectful of Bradley, remains deeply aggravated by the blinkered Nevadan judges who consigned him to the first of two defeats which jeopardised his ring career.
In a way, the spectacular knockout loss which followed was fuelled by the need he felt to look impressive in his fourth battle with Juan Manuel Marquez. Sensing he was about to stop his bitter Mexican rival, Pacquiao stayed in range too long and was caught by desperate punch.
Bradley also draws encouragement from Pacquiao, in his comeback fight from that upset, failing to apply the knockout to Brandon Rios despite comprehensively out-classing him over 12 rounds.
Pacquiao had shown signs of showing sympathy and easing up against inferior opponents previously, Bradley among them.
But now his master-trainer Freddie Roach has spent months instilling in him the need to go for the kill when he has a man in trouble… not least to avoid leaving himself at the mercy of incompetent or prejudiced judges.
?I want Manny to go for the KO against Bradley,? says Roach. ?And I expect him to get it.?
If he?s right, it would make the powerful statement which even Floyd Mayweather would find hard to ignore.
Bradley is unbeaten in 33 fights. In the most recent of those, last October, he cleverly and clearly out-pointed Marquez, and he has certainly developed as a boxer since that first meeting with Pacquiao two years ago.
However, Pacquiao has much to prove ? and even more money than usual to look forward to if he can arouse the public to harass Mayweather into meeting him in what would-be the richest fight in ring history.
I have no idea how much Mr Clinton knows about boxing but as a genius at political survival he can certainly recognise the qualities of a committed professional in-fighter when he sees one.
Bradley acknowledges that the scoring controversy which blighted their first fight has hurt public perception of him and he, too, is eager reconfirm his reputation as a formidable boxer in his own right.
But when he warns ?this fight will not go the distance? he may find Pacquiao only too willing to endorse that prediction… albeit not in the way he means it.
