The daredevil bus rumbles out of Baguio City and descends the mountain toward reality and Manila. It rolls through opaque fog and unguarded cliff edges. It releases the unmistakable scent of burdened brakes.
It passes rice fields, the lush greenery of Southeast Asia and hardy mountain goats.
And as it makes its long way down and flattens out through a score of villages, it passes a hundred of those three-wheeled taxis with cabins and a hundred signals of hard living: laundry out on clothes lines, sprawling junkyards, men in straw hats gathering crops, men pulling boats of goods through muddy rivers, windowless stores with people in tedium, the ever-present security men with big guns.
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The Manny Pacquiao Story
Part 1: Inside Manny Pacquiao's training camp
Part 2: A man unchanged by fame and fortune
Part 3: Supporting cast: Buboy, Nonoy and people who like people
Part 4: A bittersweet farewell to Mannyland
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Pacquiao v Mayweather: latest stories and pictures
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Nobody in the little group wanted to leave humble Baguio, where the feeling soothes and the citizens smile even if the living lurks nowhere close to opulence. Even the chatty rooster outside the hotel window somehow did not annoy.
More than that, though, back up there burned a storyline so warm and friendly and becoming that you will miss it when you leave. Real life just so seldom happens the way it has with
, and the idea you are about to see the story hit another crescendo at a
awards show in Manila does not dent your pang of departure.
Boy grows up impoverished in a village called Tango, about 6km from the beach. Boy at 6 or 7 walks along beach, helps grizzled old fisherman with nets. Fisherman marvels at boy's strength.
Boy, by 10, moves with resilient mother and three siblings to the city of General Santos, takes up boxing, beats everybody in region. At 15, boy stows away to Manila on 800km boat ride without telling mother, scratches hard for a meagre living, sends money home.
Young man shows rugged capacity for training constantly even while eating infrequently, his innards apparently consisting of hard Filipino fibre. Sells various food forms in the streets. Hangs out behind kitchen doors, awaiting food from restaurant managers.
OK. This very lad might start frequenting a pungent gym in Manila, but he might not become a flyweight champion. Or he might become a flyweight champion, but he might not visit the United States with a promoter. Or he might visit the United States with a promoter and meet rejection at gym upon gym, but he and the promoter might not wander into the open gym and open mind of Freddie Roach, a former boxer who in June 2001 had begun to know fledgling acclaim.
He might not find that day of kismet.
Around midday, it was. Roach held the mitts and "caught" some of his boxers. The promoter, Rod Nazario, approached the ring. Roach said sure, he would "catch" this 22-year-old Pacquiao because Roach believed in catching all worthy comers.
"He was already champion in flyweight but I'd never heard of him because the flyweight division is mostly Korea and Thailand," Roach would say 10 years on, standing by the wall in the open, obliging confines of Pacquiao's training gym.
He did glance over that day. "A little guy," he saw. "Didn't speak any English. I think I asked Nazario, 'Will he understand me?' Pretty much he said, 'You might have to show him a couple of times.' Boxing, it's a universal language, of course. I work with fighters who can't speak a word of English."
What unfathomable mystery that of all the punches from all the dreamers in all the world, Roach was about to feel the most potent - and from this wiry little man. So they began.
"I've caught a couple of good guys," Roach says. "I've caught [Mike] Tyson. I've caught [Vitali] Klitschko. I've caught heavy-handed guys, fast guys, Virgil Hill. Manny had speed, but the snap on the punch, it was like a firecracker going off. The speed and power together, that's the first time I ever saw that."
The gym quieted.
"Everyone heard that [expletive] noise. It still amazes me, the snap of the velocity and quickness. Just the sound of it. Not everybody has that. Very few, actually. It's almost like when you're a kid and you light a whole bunch of firecrackers together, instead of separating them and throwing one at a time. You light the whole thing."
After a few rounds, Roach found himself walking off to associates and saying, "This kid can [expletive] fight," with one or two unprintable adjectives tucked in the words. "He's one of the few guys that have impressed me," Roach says. "I've been impressed a couple of times in my life. Not like that day."
Roach had a new client. Pacquiao had a new trainer. Within weeks, they had an upset of the fearsome Lehlohonolo Ledwaba in Las Vegas.
And by now, as Pacquiao trains for the May 7 bout with Shane Mosley, theirs is a rapport evolved.
"You know, he's changed a lot of course because I had more of a father-figure role with him at one time," Roach says. "He'd come to me if he thought he was not being treated fairly [in business]. He'd come to me and ask for help. He can make his own decisions now.
"At one time I was the trainer and he was the student; he's evolved so that after nine-and-a-half years . it's more now it's we're equals now. More of a recognition of what's practical, what he's comfortable with or he's not comfortable. At one time he would do things just to please me. When he was younger he'd do almost anything I'd say."
But now, he says, "there's a conversation going on".
Now, Pacquiao has been elected to the legislature, even if many Filipinos recoil at his involvement with something so reputedly corrupt, and his unimaginable story has moved into its prime, which shimmers on a Friday night in the plush Sofitel Hotel full of Manila's bustling boxing community.
Long about 8pm, Manny and his wife, Jinkee, stream through the lobby towards the banquet room. He wears a dark suit with a blue dress shirt, she a tan dress. They look elegant but unforced.
The Pacquiaos sit at the head table as do Roach and the assistant trainer, Buboy Fernandez, and family members. As the awards show proceeds, the masters of ceremonies (MCs) ask the crowd to refrain from interrupting Manny's dinner for photos and autographs. And several minutes later the MCs ask again. And several minutes later the MCs ask again.
And one says, "He's been training very hard for Shane Mosley and he needs his calories!"
A few tables back on the left, amid the young boxers and older former boxers and spouses of boxers and patrons of boxing, David Rodela, Manny's Californian sparring partner, marvels at the phenomenon of Manny-in-the-Philippines. Upon arrival at the Manila airport, he says, "Everybody is like, 'David Rodela? No way!' But it's funny. At home, I can't even get a hi!" At just that moment, another man sidles up for a photo with Rodela. Rodela complies, and the man's wife plays photographer.
Eventually, Pacquiao takes the lectern - "Would you please welcome the Honourable Emmanuel 'Manny' Pacquiao!" - and a snippet of Eye of the Tiger plays as he ascends the stairs. Liza Elorde, the organiser of these Gabriel "Flash" Elorde Memorial Boxing Awards named for the renowned Filipino boxer, has gone to Baguio during the week to ensure Manny remembered. She says Manny has confessed to jangling nerves.
Those seem well-hidden as he begins, "Who would have thought that a poor boy from Mindanao who could hardly get a meal . could rise above and be the recipient of this award?"
He seems earnest, not slick. He says, "Good evening. I bring you greetings of joy and celebration. My overflowing thanks goes to the Elorde family." He thanks everybody. He quotes the late American basketball coach John Wooden: "The choice you make, makes you."
He uses the passage, "how hope can rise in the midst of pain".
He says: "In my journey I realised there is so much more to life than poverty and misery. As a Filipino, I decided to move out and conquer the world. In the process my circle of influence was enlarged."
He tells fans: "Your love and support are the wind beneath our wings." He mentions the late Mr Elorde: "We may look around and remember that we do not stand alone. We stand on the shoulders of those who have gone before us."
He says: "There is more to dream, more to accomplish, more to explore, more to discover."
Then the MC notes that Boxer of the Year has become too puny because of Pacquiao's "incredible heights" so he calls him back up for a freshly minted award called Quintessential Athlete. The big video screen reads "A Hero's Destiny".
And as the crowd eventually moves from the banquet room down the hallways and into the lobby, just then you can see out the front entrance of the Sofitel.
Manny Pacquiao from a small village called Tango, from the city of General Santos, from a childhood in which the very idea of a refrigerator seemed mysterious and distant, has gone toward a waiting vehicle. The people have obstructed. He has not minded. You can see his beaming face through the glass out there, posing for photo upon photo upon photo in the Manila night.
The next day, you might take a walk to Manila Bay. You might start missing everybody from Mannyland, from Buboy to Freddie to Ryan to Pac-Man the Jack Russell terrier to Manny with his welcoming winks and grins.
Within the usual urban maelstrom you might spot some of the most horrifying poverty imaginable. You might see human beings sprawled on sidewalks, amputees getting no attention, people grinding for tips by opening taxi doors for customers, people desperate to sell you something.
At one point, you might cross a boulevard slowly enough that you get stuck in the median between walk signals. You might stand there with two scrawny young men in flip-flops hauling around food for sale, one selling some sort of nuts and one selling those miniature bananas. You might notice their legs caked with grime.
The banana guy might look up at you and smile, and you might imagine his life, and in that moment, it might seem somewhere beyond far-fetched and somewhere approaching inconceivable that one of these wiry street kids from half a life ago turned out to be Manny Pacquiao.
About this series
Sport columnist Chuck Culpepper and sport photo editor Mike Young spent six days at Manny Pacquiao's training camp in the Philippines, meeting the world champion and the getting to know the people, places and culture that shaped him.
This is the final article of their four-part report.
Culpepper is an award-winning writer from the US who spent several years in London, researching and writing an acclaimed book about Portsmouth football club. He has been with
The National
since September.
Young has a passion for photography of sports events and the people involved. He joined
The National
in 2008 after working in newspapers and television in the US as a photographer, editor and producer.
Series recap
Part 1: In Mannyland: inside Manny Pacquiao's training camp
Part 2: Manny Pacquiao is a man unchanged by fame and fortune
Part 3: Supporting cast: Buboy, Nonoy and people who like people
Part 4: A bittersweet farewell to Mannyland
