Pacquiao a True Champion

It is virtually impossible to find a superstar athlete these days for whom some disdain can't be mustered. Michael Phelps gets busted. LeBron James gets the benefit of the NBA's preferential refereeing. The Williams Sisters get surly. Rafael Nadal showed some audacity by suggesting tennis adjust its schedule to his liking. And Derek Jeter is a Yankee.

But there is Manny Pacquiao, all 5 feet, 6 inches and 140 pounds of him. What is there about him not to like?

He is at the top of his game, the fight game, after a 2008 campaign that saw him fight three times in three different weight classes (super featherweight, lightweight and welterweight) and win all three to gain two world titles along the way. In the non-title bout at welterweight, he knocked Oscar de la Hoya into retirement.

He does his thing in exciting style, echoing Aaron Pryor, which earned him the respectful nickname PacMan.

He comes from poor beginnings in the Philippines and is as humble as a monk.

"I just try my best to make the fans happy with my performance," PacMan told me Tuesday in a phone conversation from his training camp in Southern California. "That's one of the main things I fight for, is to make people happy and proud of my sport, a sport that I'm lucky enough to be in."

As a result, he is winning over people in droves like a recent successful presidential candidate did in arenas you wouldn't expect. To be sure, by the time AT&T Park in San Francisco opened Tuesday evening for the Giants' game against San Diego, the last-place Giants' gift to fans who made it a sellout with Filipino Heritage Night tickets was selling on eBay for as much as $40, or twice the price of the Filipino Heritage ticket. It was the ubiquitous bobblehead, but of someone rarely caricatured: a junior welterweight boxing champion not even from here, Pacquiao.

That is how popular the "human tsunami," as fight analyst Larry Merchant so perfectly dubbed Pacquiao, has become. Now, he is drawing legions of fans beyond even the Philippines, where he is so much the rage that his fights famously have brought about informal ceasefires between sniping Muslim rebels and Catholic government forces. Now, he is the reason for sold out arenas, as will be the case, promoter Bob Arum announced Tuesday, on May 2 when Pacquiao meets Ricky "The Hitman" Hatton from England for Hatton's title at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas.

"'The Battle of East and West,'" Arum boasted of his latest PacMan fight, "is on track to break all existing pay-per-view records."

Oscar de la Hoya and Floyd Mayweather set the record. That's how big PacMania could be two weekends from now.

But here is the ultimate reason for me to applaud Pacquiao: he is willing to risk it all for a selfless reason, his people. Pacquiao reiterated that he is going to make a second run for national office next year in his homeland. His first in 2007 was unsuccessful.

I've always been drawn to athletes who aren't fearful of using their platforms as bully pulpits for causes greater than the enrichment of their bank account. Paul Robeson. Curt Flood. Muhammad Ali. Tommie Smith and John Carlos. Joey Cheek. Here is one in Pacquiao willing not only to voice his concerns but put them on a ballot as well.

"I plan on running for Congress again because that's what's in my heart," PacMan said in a very measured and respectful tone that reflects his demeanor. "I want to help people.

"I know that politics is difficult and corrupt even sometimes. I want to change it. I don't want to run for Congress to make any money; I have my own money. I'm okay. My family is doing well. I'm just here to help."

In Pacquiao's first bid for office he was booed at a rally by some in his country who didn't want him to align himself with a particular side, or shelve his outrageously successful boxing career that brought so much good feeling to the Philippines. It was a sign that he risked his good standing.

"I don't think he should be entering politics," Dr. Belinda Aquino, director of the Center for Philippine Studies at the University of Hawai'i at Manoa, told me Tuesday. "He will lose some credibility. I'm afraid he may be being used."

Aquino pointed out that in the Philippines' multi-party political system competing parties are always looking for some means other than their platforms to attract voters and garner power and often those means are celebrities who can be convinced to run for office. Former President Joseph Estrada was known as the Ronald Reagan of the Philippines because he, too, was formerly a B-movie actor. Vice President Manuel De Castro was a one-time Larry King of Philippines' television. Other actors and athletes are in smaller elected offices nationally and regionally.

"I'm sure there's a motivation for people to get Pacquiao involved in politics," Dr. Aquino said.

PacMan said he is unconcerned. As much as he is driven to box by a desire to please ticket buyers, he said he is driven to public service by a desire to pull up those in the poor part of the Philippines where he grew up, once watching in horror as his father slaughtered the family dog for sustenance.

"That doesn't matter if it has a bad affect on my popularity," he said. "My ultimate goal is to help people, and to be able to find a way to assist the people in need, because I came from that area and those people are desperate for help."

Manny Pacquiao is champion of the people, too.