Manny Pacquiao’s Poignant Perseverance in the Boxing Ring

I shouldn’t be so chagrined that Manny Pacquiao is re-entering a Las Vegas boxing ring this weekend for a professional fight at the age of 46. After all, I recently wrote a meditation on persevering through the ravages of age and physical decline. I’ve admired Pacquiao for years and trailed him around New York City for a Time magazine cover story in 2009. He was the most recognizable Filipino on earth at the time, a distinction that everyone from the islands — where I was born — was proud.

And there was so much to be proud of. Born into extreme poverty on the island of Mindanao, he was — at the height of his career — a whirlwind of prowess and prosperity, with the relentless voracity of the videogame that became his nickname: Pac-Man. One estimate has his net worth at more than $200 million, out of earnings from the sport and endorsements as high as half-a-billion dollars. His 2015 battle with nemesis Floyd Mayweather Jr. still holds the record for most pay-per-view sales: 4.6 million. He is literally pound-for-pound the greatest pugilist of our time: the only boxer in history to hold championships in eight different weight classes. When I reported on him in 2009, he’d already won six and was preparing to win his seventh — in the welterweight division. That was 40 pounds (640 ounces, or 18.1 kilograms) heavier than the 107-pound flyweight class he began his career with 11 years before. He claimed the eighth — the super welterweight, which has a top limit of 154 pounds — the next year. And won that division a second time when he was 40 years old.