Time hails Pinoy icon boxing's latest savior

HOLLYWOOD – It was just a matter of time for Manny Pacquiao to land on the cover of TIME Magazine.

And with all his triumphs on and off the ring, the 30-year-old Filipino boxer has done just that, earning the privilege normally given presidents or Nobel Prize winners or events that have a lasting effect on people from around the world.

For its November issue that hits the stands of Manila next week, Pacquiao, boxing’s current pound-for-pound champion, shares in a five-page feauture his beginnings, his life, his world.

He becomes the first Filipino personality to land on the cover of the weekly news magazine after the former President and icon of democracy, Corazon Aquino, first after leading the 1986 People Power Revolt and after her recent death.

Pacquiao is not the first boxer to make it. But certainly he’s in very good company.

There’s Jack Dempsey in 1923, James Tunney in 1929, Max Schmeling in 1931, Primo Carnera in 1941, Joe Loous in 1951, Sugar Ray Robinson in 1963, Cassius Clay in 1971, then Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier in 1978 and Mike Tyson in 1988.

Other great athletes who share the privilege are Pete Rose (1989), Magic Johnson (1996) Michael Johnson (1996), Michael Jordan (1998), Marion Jones (2000), Tiger Woods (2000), sisters Serena and Venus Williams (2001), and Michael Phelps (2008).

And while it’s the first time Pacquiao landed on the cover TIME Asia, it’s not the first time he was featured in TIME Magazine.

Earlier this year, he was on TIME Magazine in its 100 most influential persons list, joining the likes of US President Barrack Obama, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, tennis champion Rafael Nadal of Spain and the face of golf, Tiger Woods of the United States.

Pacquiao said as a child who sold cigarettes and slept on the streets of Manila, he never dreamed that someday he would be as great as he is right now.

“I absolutely had no idea that when I started my career in boxing to provide a better life for myself and my family, that I would now be where I am today and on the cover of TIME Magazine. A fighter’s dream is to win a world title and gain financial stability.

“But what is happening to me now is the most humbling experience of my life. It is a great honor for me to be the face of my people and to let everyone know we are a small but mighty country. I have great pride for all of the Filipinos living throughout the world and it is these people that I fight for each and every time I step into the ring,” he was quoted as saying.

“Manny Pacquiao, now 30, is the latest savior of boxing, a fighter with enough charisma, intelligence and backstory to help rescue a sport lost in the labyrinth of pay-per-view,” wrote Howard Chua-Eoan and Ishaan Tharoor in the TIME Magazine article.

“In the Philippines, Pacquiao is a demigod. The claim goes that when his fights are broadcast live, the crime rate plummets because everyone in the country is glued to a screen. His private life as well as the ins and outs and ups and downs of his training regimen are tabloid fodder; his much brooded political ambitions are a dilemma many Filipinos feel as existentially as Hamlet’s soliloquy: To be or not to be ... a Congressman?” they wrote.

“(But) Can Manny Pacquiao continue to be the most loved man in the Philippines when he quits the ring and enters the cockpit of politics? That is going to be the fight of his life,” the article concluded.

Pacquiao, who’s been to the greatest boxing venues, and past great champions like Erik Morales, Marco Antonio Barrera, Oscar dela Hoya and Ricky Hatton, has been everywhere off the ring trying to promote the sport as well as his country.

Twice he’d thrown the ceremonial pitch in the Major League. He’d been to the Yankee Stadium, the AT&T Park and Petco Park and just the other night appeared in the Jimmy Kimmel Show, a nationally-televised US talk show.

“It’s my responsibility being Manny Pacquiao. If you want to be famous then that’s your responsibility,” answered Pacquiao at the Wild Card Gym to a question fielded by Steve Kim Thursday.

He would often say, “With great power comes great responsibility.”

Pacquiao is gunning for his seventh world title against reigning WBO welterweight champion Miguel Cotto of Puerto Rico on Nov. 14 ( Nov. 15 in Manila) at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas.