Los Angeles: Manny Pacquiao has been responding to the pressure of preparing for the fight of his life against Floyd Mayweather by taking refuge in his Bible classes.
With the Philippine nation — all 107 million citizens — expecting victory over the unbeaten American next Saturday, his most prominent advisers, who include promoter Bob Arum, trainer Freddie Roach and Michael Koncz, say they are worried for him.
The entourage of Filipinos, which is just under one hundred people — half of whom are extended family — have all been based at the Park Plaza Hotel in Los Angeles. One of Pacquiao’s team estimated that it is costing as much as $2 million (Dh7.34 million) to have the family and entourage around him for this fight.
There have been the visits from his celebrity friends all week: Mark Wahlberg at the Wild Card Gym in Hollywood on Thursday, an evening recording with interviewer Jimmy Kimmel for primetime American television on Wednesday night, after Keanu Reeves had earlier visited him at his home in Los Angeles that day.
Television news crews from the Philippines and a group of a dozen journalists from that country follow his every move. Dong Secuya, who runs the website Pinoy Greats, says the interest in stories posted on the dotcom boxing site from around the world is unprecedented.
“We have never known anything like it, there are millions and millions of hits every day, and it is almost impossible to keep up, there are so many stories.”
Pacquiao reckons there is no pressure. “God is with me, so I have peace of mind,” he told me this week. “Peace of mind is the most important thing. If God is with you, everything will be all right. I feel no pressure.”
But Roach, his Hall of Fame trainer, expressed his fears, saying he wants him to slow down. “The drug-testing people came and said they wanted to take blood. He did it before the workout so he didn’t spar that day,” he says.
“And another day I just said, ‘Hey, you’ve been working really hard, take a day off’. I saw him come through the door looking a little sluggish. I can read him when he comes through the door and I know what sort of day we’re going to have. He wasn’t smiling. He seemed like he was bothered by something.
“I gave him the day off. I’m not going to over-train my fighter. Sometimes you know your fighter and you can read your fighter. You know when they’re on and when they’re off.
“Sometimes the best thing in the world is to send them home and let them go rest. I’m kind of satisfied at this point. I’d like the fight to be tomorrow but we do have a few more days.”
On Monday, two large buses will transport the entire team on the four-hour journey along the motorway between Los Angeles and Sin City. The group will get off at the Mandalay Bay resort, a five-minute taxi ride from the MGM Grand Hotel, where the contest with Mayweather will take place, and where the pre-fight demands of more interviews, more photocalls, and the face-off with Mayweather at the weigh-in will take place.
It is an exhausting, relentless and well-worn ritual for the prize-fighter.
Back home the pressure increases on Pacquiao too. He is being investigated by the Filipino and American tax authorities for £30 million (Dh166.44 million) in alleged unpaid taxes. His lawyers dispute this, saying that he is being asked to pay double tax — in the US and the Philippines.
His supporters cite the fact that, when tropical storm Sendong hit Mindanao in 2011, attention turned to “the single biggest one-man charity institution in the country”.
There is a welfare state in the Philippines. It is referred to as Manny Pacquiao, because he gives so many donations to worthy causes. Pacquiao seems unflustered by it all.
— The Telegraph Group Limited, London 2015
