His nickname was “Pac-Man,” though he should’ve been called the Muhammad Ali of the Pacific Rim. Such was his image: a larger than life figure who elevated the Philippines with each of his stirring victories.
From the night in 2003 when he entered the Alamodome to challenge the already legendary Marco Antonio Barrera, Manny Pacquiao seemed hell-bent on scaling one career peak after another. An embarrassing generation of heavyweights had made it possible for men weighing no more than jockeys to captivate boxing audiences as they’d not done since the Great Depression. It was once again the small man’s moment; hungry for fame, Pacquiao soared. By 2009 he was boxing’s most reliable star. By 2012 he was an international name and a Philippine congressman, and by the time he announced his retirement this month he was an institution. It is probably true that Pacquiao did more to put the Philippines onto the world’s radar than all of the great Filipino fighters before him combined.
When he recently said farewell to boxing at age 42, Pacquiao shared with Julio Cesar Chavez and Roberto Duran the rare distinction of being a foreign fighter beloved in the U.S. To a stubborn minority of fans, Pacquiao was a spotlight hound, plagued by enough controversies to sully his smiling image – unproven steroid accusations, political connections of dubious merit, and a grab-bag of excuses when things didn't go his way, everything from mysterious injuries to ill-fitting socks. But to the majority, Pacquiao was a kind of genius: a wicked southpaw puncher, a crafty boxer, always prepared to fight (unlike Duran), charismatic and charming (unlike Chavez), and perfectly attuned to what the customers wanted from a champion.
Pacquiao’s reputation was not made by promoters and could not have been. In an era when fighters were at the mercy of networks, Pacquiao flew through boxing like a meteor, forcing the world to follow him in a lightning game of ‘catch me if you can.’ A short fellow with a wispy mustache who could barely speak English, he was hardly the debonair sports figure preferred by segment producers, yet his presence howled at us through television screens – we saw his frustration during tough fights, the joy he took in his own dazzling footwork, the satisfaction he took at his own perfection – and he reached across a mass medium in ways few fighters do, pounding his gloves together, smiling, weeping, wincing, scowling. He was like an opera star, his every gesture reaching out to the cheapest seats.
His style seemed reckless, designed to sweep across rings and leave opponents disoriented before they were socked to the canvas, but what gripped his audience was Pacquiao’s ravenous appetite for battle. Even late in his career when he had slowed down he still looked like a predator smelling blood. At times his combinations seemed awkward, but in the middle of these sloppy displays came the pinpoint left hand, a round of lazy fireworks capped off by a single live grenade. The knock against Pacquiao in the early days was that he lacked sophistication, that he was nothing more than a feisty guy who enjoyed a good scrap. Yet when his prey was cornered, the execution was swift and exact, as if he’d gone from being a berserker swinging his sword to a cold, professional assassin. Pacquiao became all the more intriguing when we learned of a member of his posse whose job it was to ward off evil spirits.
This belief in hoodoo followed Pacquiao throughout career. It was even revealed that a dozen or so of his camp followers were positioned around his bed as he slept, the idea being that if a succubus found its way to Pacquiao’s hotel room, it would become confused and sink its fangs into the throat of a mere sparring partner rather than the beloved international boxing star. He may have been fighting in American football stadiums and living like a raja, but he was still the ragged boy who grew up in the Philippine slums, a man who attended cockfights and believed in ghosts. This is why there were stories of his countrymen, unable to afford shoes for their children but gathering on fight night, watching the action on a TV attached to a car battery. They lived vicariously through their champion whose life seemed magical. If an evil entity dared to get near Pacquiao, his fans would’ve torn it to pieces and had their hero ready for church on Sunday.
As displayed across 72 professional bouts and nearly as many amateur contests, Pacquiao’s raison d'être was to please crowds. “I just want to make the people happy,” Pacquiao said after his fights. He was a ham at heart, often appearing on talk shows to sing old pop hits - the high point may have been when he joined Will Ferrell for a duet of John Lennon's 'Imagine,' Pacquiao's schoolboy earnestness almost palpable. He also starred in a handful of cornball action flicks, including one where he wore a Captain Marvel cape and saved the planet. We knew members of his camp by name, and we even knew his wife, Jinkee, by sight. There were Pacquiao toys and dolls, purchased by grown men. The latest news is that he plans to run for president of his country. No one is surprised. This was no ordinary boxer, though his story had traditional boxing tropes: growing up in extreme poverty, achieving fame and glory, suffering some crushing defeats, overcoming personal problems, and then the later years, punctuated by comebacks and miracle wins. Throughout, he kept a twinkle in his eye, like the night he was receiving his prefight instructions in his dressing room and interrupted the referee to ask, “If my opponent is down on one knee, can I hit him?” When told no, he looked into the camera and winked. No matter the heights he reached, Pacquiao always seemed like a street urchin who had broken into a candy store, tossing the goodies to his pals outside.
Like most fighters, Pacquiao overstayed his welcome, and recently he lost to an opponent he would’ve blown away just a few years ago. In the 2010s, a less vicious Pacquiao emerged – he was so proud of his increased ring savvy that outsmarting opponents became preferable to knocking them senseless. But his admirers will always remember his string of knockout wins in the 2000s, when it seemed like sparks were flying from his gloves. The drama came from our fear that this funny little fellow might walk into a punch, as he did on occasion, his style of diving towards an opponent seeming more suicidal as he took on larger men. He was like a tightrope walker; there was always a feeling of relief when he got to the end of a fight without falling to his doom.
Whether he belongs at the same table as Ali or Ray Robinson is irrelevant. At a time when boxing needed a new superstar, he planted
his flag in the ground and declared himself the man to watch. There were other great
fighters in the past few decades, but few were as fun as Emmanuel Dapidran Pacquiao, whose roaring left hand and impish smile provided a small amount of light in an increasingly dark new century.
- Don Stradley
