Manny Pacquiao, the man, is more than Manny Pacquiao the boxer, champion though he may be. This is why he doesn’t trash talk, and says only that he will do his best.

MANILA, Philippines — I've never been a fan of boxing, and I don’t think I’ll ever become one. But I am a fan of Manny Pacquiao.

The thing with boxing is that it strikes me awfully as little more than cockfighting for the first world. It is not primarily a sport; it is primarily a mode of entertainment.

Fights are held in Vegas casinos where the high-rolling rich and famous gather, socialize, and make bets (or investments, else it’s just plain advertising). Businessmen, politicians, superstars come in suits and drink their cocktails, watching barely-clothed women sing the national anthem. Then a series of men, clad in nothing but shorts and gloves, get in the ring in batches of two to clobber the life out of each other.

Of course, the men who do the boxing aren’t themselves rich — they can become rich if they’re lucky or unbelievably good, but they don’t start off that way. They usually start off in some obscure region of the world, with backgrounds that differ little in terms of education and social status. They fight because that’s where the money is, and there’s little else they know to do.

People clap and cheer as their fists crack and nerves pop.

To the people watching, it’s one amusement among many. Flip the channel, put on your iPod, whip up your PSP and the bloody match fades into obscurity. To the men fighting, it is their life, and sometimes it costs them precisely that.

I think there is a great imbalance here. We are treating men as a means to give us another fix for our insatiable thirst for violence, albeit in legal and socially acceptable ways. (Surely Immanuel Kant would disapprove!) In our eyes, they are not people doing their jobs: they are gladiators and lions. Even more, the boxing ring is the Colosseum, and we are nothing other than bloodthirsty savages who call ourselves Romans.

Oh, but Manny Pacquiao. Manny Pacquiao. Manny Pacquiao is Maximus!

What I think sets the man apart — and which earns him my respect — is that he doesn’t take himself too seriously, and this perhaps to the partial disdain of Coach Freddie Roach and the rest of his training team. Yeah sure he trains hard, but he makes trips to Hollywood on the side. He gives a stellar fighting performance, but he also likes belting out some with guys like Will Ferrel.

Pacquiao has redefined what it is to be an athlete, a champion, a legend. He has toppled greats from eight categories of boxing, but he’s probably having too much fun to make the mistake of thinking that this is all there is to it.

Sure, if I had that much money I’d probably be having fun too. But Pacquiao is something else entirely: he went back to school, even got himself elected to Congress. If I were from GenSan, I would seriously not have voted for him, but I appreciate this about the man: he is more than just a boxer. Boxing is a job, and he has said explicitly that it is not what he will be doing forever. Manny Pacquiao, the man, is more than Manny Pacquiao the boxer, champion though he may be.

This is why he doesn’t trash talk, and says only that he will do his best.

This is why he hasn’t turned into the royal jerk that lesser men become upon achieving far less.

This is why he is loved by the Filipino people, people in general, people everywhere, from Aling Dionesia to Mickey Rourke.

This is why Pacquiao doesn’t need Floyd Mayweather. Pacquiao has no need to prove his greatness. It is self-evident, incontrovertible, sealed.

I won’t deny that the man is entertaining too — I was willing to endure Marian Rivera in “Show Me Da Manny” back when Manny was actually there, and I let out laugh after laugh after laugh.

But sometimes I wonder if, with all our religious devotion to Pacquiao, all this fanaticism, we are, ultimately, the ones who entertain him. And we can laugh on and on, but the joke is really on us.

The author is a fourth year Philosophy major at the University of the Philippines-Diliman