A servant and a gentleman

Master Blaster
Neil Bravo


Congressman Emmanuel Dapidran Pacquiao, eight-time world champion, legislator, public servant, philanthropist.

You can add one more. Billionaire.

Travie McCoy and Bruno Mars must have wished they were Manny Pacquiao when they sang “I wanna be a billionaire.” Just about everything on their wish list is already happening to the Pacman.

Yes, I agree with Travie and Bruno, there are just so many things you can do when you’re a billionaire. You can buy all the things you never had. Be on the cover of Forbes or be on its list of its wealthiest. Or smile next to Oprah or sing on Jimmy Kemmel show.

Manny can charter a Boeing 757 to fly his 187 family and friends, buy himself an Armani three-piece, wrap Jinky with a Burberry or swing a Louie Vuitton bag on Mommy D. Oh, all there is a Master Card can buy.

Afterall, he is a billionaire.

What’s a quick 36-minute workout with an easy target worth $25 million is for?

But that is not what Manny is all about. Manny can teach Travie and Bruno, money is not everything. At least, that’s what it is to him now. He has come a long way from mashing flour and yeast in a baker’s sweatshop as a teen. He is no longer the skinny pugilist earning crumbs from lowly fightcards.

Manny’s name is on the lips of Bill Clinton, in the campaign of Harry Reid, and in the articles of just about every respectable boxing analyst in the world. And after filling the Cowboys Stadium with nearly 42,000 fans and recording more wins that the Cowboys of Dallas this year, Jerry Jones should be thinking of changing the name of the colossal sports facility to Manny Pacquiao Stadium.

Last Sunday, Manny fought a perfect five rounds. Flirted with disaster in the sixth. Then showed the world a different fighter in the last six rounds. Manny explicitly redefined boxing from its savage classification to an artform. Not that he painted Margarito’s face like a Picasso painting. He simply showed the world that being a gentleman is foremost the best quality of an athlete more than his brute force and power.

After Sunday’s fight, I am now convinced that Manny’s best weapon is not his speed but his compassion. We heard him say boxing is not about killing each other. In a fight so surprisingly lopsided, he can take out the taller and heavier Margarito with one more barrage. It did not come. He held back. He asked the ref to mercifully stop the carnage. He could not hurt him more. Here was a man almost blinded by the beating he has taken from a virtuoso whose gloves worked like a brush creating a masterpiece on a canvas. Manny could not take it allowing his dreaded hands to destroy this man. He has a loving wife and a kid too. His heart may be a warrior but he has no fight left to give.

Manny walked away. His intent to bring down this man softened by a compassionate heart. There is no reason to further beat him up. There is no reason to floor him down when he can let him walk up and still get the W and his record eighth title.

No title is more valuable than a man’s compassion for others. Those eight world titles are no valuable than an act of valour. He understood and lived with the rules of engagement. Only a gentleman of the highest order can live with such ideals.

For that, Manny deserves a medal for a humanitarian stand. A prize as priceless as millions of money in the bank, as noble as a Nobel, as famed as a Pulitzer, or as dignified as a Harvard doctorate degree for humanis causa.

Make Manny the year-ending cover of Time, Newsweek or Forbes. Make him a UN ambassador.

In my book, Emmanuel Dapidran Pacquiao is Man of the Year.