PAC-MAN: Pacquiao shocked everyone by crushing Barrera in San Antonio
Pacquiao didn't need prayers. He sprang off the canvas with a playful bounce and waved his opponent forward: bring it on! After that, the fists flew one way. In the third round, Pacquiao landed a concussive left that scrambled Barrera's motor control; the favorite sat down in the ring like a stunned child, feeling a shock that would soon spread to the rest of the boxing world. By the end of the 11th round, a humbled Barrera had been bludgeoned into submission, with Pacquiao landing 150 more power punches than the Mexican. The referee stopped the fight, and Pacquiao raised his arms, crying and smiling as his cornermen draped the Philippine flag around the shoulders of the featherweight dragon slayer. "At least they're finally beginning to pronounce his name right," says Rod Nazario, Pacquiao's longtime business manager.
Since that triumphant night, Pacquiao (it's pronounced correctly as Pak-yao) has been hailed as one of the world's best fighters; Ring magazine recently named him the "people's champion" in the featherweight class. At 25, he's now a main-event attraction who can negotiate seven-figure-per-fight deals with HBO. Back home in the Philippines, he's revered as a real-life Rocky who slugged his way out of the country's pervasive poverty and proved that Filipinos can compete and win on the global stage. When he returned to Manila after his victory in Texas, hundreds of thousands turned out to cheer his motorcade. Since then, he's been busy shooting commercials and a movie, collecting awards, attending parties in his honor and, most recently, campaigning for his friend President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo in the nation's upcoming election. If Arroyo had Pacquiao's popularity, she'd be re-elected in a landslide. "There are two things this country is hungry for: a fighter and a hero," says Ronnie Nathanielsz, a veteran journalist and member of Pacquiao's inner circle. "In Manny we have both, in a time when we have been down."
The national hero — an elementary school dropout who started out by selling doughnuts — views his sudden fame with relative nonchalance. "People look at me the same way," he says. "There's a little difference, but it shouldn't matter." He insists he's still the same Manny who used to box in Manila for peanuts, even if his next fight is likely to earn him at least $1 million. Still, it's hard to avoid noticing the signs of Pacquiao's newfound wealth. Today, hanging out in his rented apartment in the capital, Pac-Man is wearing two fat gold watches — one of which, he notes proudly, cost some $15,000. He owns two houses: one in his hometown of General Santos City, the other in Davao. He owns a Honda SUV, a Ford Expedition and a Toyota Tamaraw. And he has a big — and expensive — collection of admirers. Filipinos tend to have unusually large extended families, but Pacquiao's posse has expanded of late, seemingly at the same rate as his fight purses, which hit $700,000 for the battle with Barrera. Members circle the fighter like planets around the sun, cooking his dinner, clearing away his plate, carrying his pool cue when he goes out for the marathon billiards matches that occupy many of his evenings. Manager Nazario remembers calling Pacquiao the morning after a party in his honor, not long after the fighter returned from the U.S. "He said, 'I thought I had 30 relatives,'" Nazario recalls, "'but there were actually 100 ... 150 ... 200 ... and they all say they are my relatives!'"
Pacquiao, who is married and has two young sons, likes his extra-extended family, even if they do tax his budget. "All those who are around me are the bridge to my success, so they are all important," he says. He helps pay for the education of some of his younger relatives. He even gave a few hundred dollars to Rolando Navarrete, a once famous boxing champion from his hometown who squandered his talent and ended up in jail for a few years on a rape charge. Sitting in the kitchen of his apartment surrounded by a coterie of relatives, Pacquiao seems happy and at ease, joking with his brother-in-law and teasing another family member for losing a bet on the horse race they've been watching on TV. His advisers are worried that Pacquiao's generosity could be his undoing, but the boxer says it's just part of being a champion. "I don't mind having these relatives. I'll give them a little, since they all prayed for my victory."
If Pacquiao wants to see how far those prayers have taken him, all he has to do is visit his $54,000 home in General Santos City — a palace, by local standards — located in the same neighborhood as the dirt-floor shanty where he spent part of his childhood. Local officials advertise the town as the most competitive middle-sized city in the Philippines. But even though carefully qualified, the slogan seems optimistic at best. GenSan is situated on the southern tip of the lawless province of Mindanao, which is wracked by separatist fighting and kidnapping. Many of the residents are poor tuna fishermen, yet growing up, Pacquiao and his family were so impoverished that their neighbors pitied them. "He was a bright boy but didn't finish school because of poverty," says Jognard Verzoza, who went to elementary school with Pacquiao. "You could tell how poor his family was by his clothes."
One product that GenSan churns out in spades is fearless fighters. As in the barrios of east Los Angeles or the slums of Mexico City, professional boxing offers one of the few available routes out of the hopelessness of Mindanao. For Pacquiao, boxing may have been the only way. His parents separated when he was young, and his mother, Dionisia Pacquiao, raised her six children on her paltry income from a series of odd jobs. Manny helped out by selling bread and taking in laundry, but in his spare time he would do gofer work at the local gym or pound cardboard boxes filled with clothes — his first makeshift punching bag. Wiry, tanned and talkative, 54-year-old Dionisia nowadays lives next door to Pacquiao's new house, in a smaller place her son bought her. She leaves little doubt who her favorite child is: "He is like a Xerox copy of me," she says. The resemblance is as much mental as physical. "If I had been a man, I would have been a millionaire because I would have been a champion boxer," she adds.
Pacquiao is a source of local pride, but the attention he receives is sometimes dangerous. Dionisia has been robbed, and there have been threats made against his children; the tall walls, the guard tower and the bodyguard manning his house are clearly meant to discourage casual visitors. The boy who had nothing has much to lose now. Under orders from Pacquiao, his sons — toddlers Emmanuel Jr. and Michael — are kept in an air-conditioned back room all day, out of reach of kidnappers. Pacquiao has said he'll forbid his sons to enter the ring, but Dionisia understands how powerless parental desires can be. "If your children want to do something, you cannot dictate to them," she says, smiling as she watches her grandsons. "After all, I wanted Manny to be a priest."
Instead, Pacquiao fled GenSan at age 14 by stowing away on a ship bound for Manila. He had no friends, no money and one goal: "I wanted to be a world champion," Pacquiao recalls. Supporting himself as a construction worker, he gained local renown quickly on the amateur and pro-boxing circuit as a powerful puncher with little discipline and less fear. "There was hardly any science in his fighting," says Rudy Salud, a Manila-based boxing manager and former secretary-general of the World Boxing Council (WBC). "He fought like a mad dog. He was rather wild out of the ring, too." Pacquiao admits he drank and gambled in those days after he temporarily abandoned the devout Catholic faith he was raised in. "I lost that for a while when I came to Manila," Pacquiao says. "But God was always looking out for me."
It certainly seemed that way. In 1998, when he was just 19, Pacquiao won a world flyweight title. Two years later, he added a world superbantamweight title. But it wasn't until manager Nazario hooked him up with Freddie Roach, a respected boxing trainer in Los Angeles, that Pacquiao began to reach his potential. "I could tell there was something inside him, but he had not yet discovered it because no one was teaching him," Nazario recalls. "That's why I decided to bring him to the States." Roach took Pacquiao's natural aggressiveness and fearlessness and combined them with defense and discipline. Over the next two years, Pacquiao went undefeated, earning decisive victories in each of his fights before the Barrera bout, aside from one contested draw. Against Barrera, Roach came up with the plan for beating the favorite: stay close, give no quarter, and hammer him with body shots.
As brilliant as Pacquiao's win over Barrera was, it's still just one night. To achieve lasting greatness, he'll have to repeat moments like that again and again. He could start on May 8, when he goes up against International Boxing Federation and WBC featherweight champion Juan Manuel Marquez, a tough, powerful counterpuncher. Though ranked as boxing's top featherweight, Pacquiao holds no title belts in the division — beating Marquez would make him the official champ and quiet any doubters who feel the Barrera fight was a one-off. Some question Pacquiao's readiness, however, whereas Marquez has apparently been in serious training for months. At a March 25 press conference in L.A., Marquez left no doubt about his focus, declaring, "Only in death will I relinquish my belts." Meanwhile, Pacquiao admitted in February that he has barely laced a glove since his last bout, diverted by the allure of the pool hall and the many other distractions of sudden celebrity. He was booked to fight in a two-round exhibition in Manila in February but begged off, claiming he had left his sparring gear in GenSan. "Manny has to be warned repeatedly about the dangers of overconfidence," says Salud.
The situation bears a worrisome resemblance to Pacquiao's first loss, back in 1995. He was expected to cruise over a local fighter named Rustico Torrecampo and slacked off in his training, only to be floored by a third-round punch that left him unconscious, the one time in his career he has been knocked out. "I was a little overconfident," Pacquiao admits. "I was a little careless."
If Pacquiao is outworked in his next fight, it will be a first. Whatever their opinion of his skills as a sweet scientist, boxing observers agree that he is — when not distracted — one of the most disciplined competitors in the sport. "When I am in training, all [other activities] will stop," Pacquiao vows. "It's like a tunnel when I'm training for a fight." Salud says Pacquiao has the chance to be the greatest boxer in Philippine history, and others see in the young fighter a new confidence and maturity since the victory over Barrera. "There's been a huge change in his personality," says journalist Trinidad. "He now has serenity. Before, it was very hard to talk to him. He was not that secure. Now he seems so serene. It's the gift of a real champion."
Or is it? In casual conversation, Pacquiao speaks as much about his life after boxing, his plans to become a professional pool player or dabble in politics, as he does about his next bout. His serenity might be the sign of a fighter who has nothing left to prove — and who is therefore vulnerable in the ring. Does he still have the hunger, the pride, to compete? Trinidad thinks so: "He is not proud of his skills, but he is proud of his heart." Even though Pacquiao is no longer the underdog, says Salud, he will still fight like one: "His courage is such that his fights are half over before they begin. His courage comes from poverty, from having lived that way." Pacquiao agrees. Without his background on the mean streets of Mindanao, he says, "I never would have been a champion."