The champion of the 8 -class boxing of Manny Pacquiao sent a goodbye to the boxing floor on September 29, closing for more than 3 decades of attachment as a peak boxer, a legend of the world boxing village.
Pacquiao said from now on he will focus on his political career to “serve the people of Filipino to have a better life”. Here are things you may not know about the name Manny Pacquiao.
1. Poor background
Emmanuel Dapidran Pacquiao was born on December 17, 1978 in Kibawe, the most poor area in the south of Mindanao Island. Manny lives with his mother and six siblings in a hut before moving to General Santos.
Here, when he was only 12 years old, he was led by a relative to street battles, where the winner received 100 peso (45 thousand VND), and the loser received 50 peso.
“I heard that if you lose, people still give money,” Manny Pacquiao said in an interview in 2015, recounting the reason he was charming with the boxing platform.
At the age of 14, Pacquiao dropped out of school. He escaped on the train to Manila, doing everything, from selling cakes on the street to the porter on the construction site to have money to send to his mother to adopt two younger brothers.
Fortunately for Manny Pacquiao, he can still practice and play boxing. Pacquiao's talent was very early – right at the age of 16, Pacquiao started playing boxing in professional matches and appeared on TV.
“Thank you to boxing. Thank you for changing my life.
2. Boxing career
Manny Pacquiao won the first world championship in 1998, when he was 19 years old. Pacquiao defeated the WBC champion of the Flyweight Thailand Chatchai Sasakul with Knockout right away, then protected the belt once before the Mexican rival Gabriel Mira.
Pacquiao won the Super Bantamweight WBC belt on his 21st birthday, continuing to protect this WBC belt for 5 more times in 17 months. In June 2001, Mannay Pacquiao won an IBF belt at MGM Grand Garden Arena, Paradise, Nevada, USA – where he continued to win a lot of success in the next two decades.
Possessing horrific punches and scary speeds, Manny Pacquiao is considered the most excellent attacker in boxing history. Of a total of 26 years of professional boxing, Manny Pacquiao has a total of 62 wins, 8 losses and 2 draws, with 12 championship belts in 8 different weight classes, from 50kg to 70kg.
In 2016, Pacquiao first announced hanging gloves. Nearly 40 years old, everyone thinks that the peak of Manny Pacquiao has not returned. But after more than a year, Pacquiao still appeared on the stage, even winning a championship before announcing hanging gloves to focus political career.
The success in the boxing arena turned Manny Pacquiao into a true hero, not only in the Philippines but also in the entire Asian scale. In addition, according to statistics, the total income that Pacquiao earned from matches was about 63 million USD, equivalent to nearly 1.5 trillion dong.
3. Political career
Manny Pacquiao has started to enter the political school since 2010, when he was elected to become a parliament and continued to be present in the second election in 2013. However, during this time Pacquiao still played professional boxing and had to be absent in many meetings to prioritize preparation for gloves.
In 2016, Manny Pacquiao officially became a Senator in the Parliament – this is the main reason why Pacquiao announced the first glove.
He supported the death penalty, but it was very consistent on the fact that President Rodrigo Duterte in purge on drug crimes – this sweep received a lot of criticism from the international community for killing thousands of people in the poor areas of the Philippines.
Manny Pacquiao followed the religion, so he was also condemned by many mixed opinions when he spoke stigma against LGBTQ as “worse than animals”, or when he proposed a law that banned divorce, abortion, and contraceptive pills.
The third gender stigma has led Pacquiao to lose advertising contracts with Nike. Recently, he was once again “scrutinized” to say that he relied on his faith to God to defeat Covid-19.
However, the advantage of Manny Pacquiao as a sports hero of the Philippines is still there. Pulseasia Research has stated that he ranked fourth in the list of candidates preparing to election to replace incumbent President Duterte.