INQUIRER Sports

HOLLYWOOD, California—Overlooking the corner of Sunset Boulevard and Vine Street is a rectangular white billboard featuring an athlete with a serious look and wearing an all-weather hoodie.

The billboard rises, almost unobtrusively, from an obscure parking lot that is a stark contrast to the famous boulevard just around the next street bend, the one that shares its name with California’s most popular district.

The face on the billboard, though, is not as easy to ignore.

In fact, if the billboard wins the attention of passers-by, it is largely because the face looking down from it is Filipino ring superstar Manny Pacquiao, who is currently preparing to rewrite sports trivia books as he guns for an unprecedented seventh weight crown on November 14.

Like the spot where it stands, the billboard—which foregrounds a larger but less lit-up Kobe Bryant wall advertisement—sits figuratively on the fringes of the altar to Pacquiao’s fame. There is the guesting in a nationally televised US talk show, the filming of a commercial with the biggest names in sports, and, lately, the front-page appearance on the respected Time magazine’s Asia version.

“I really liked it,” said Pacquiao, with a smile that gave off the feeling that he hasn’t fully comprehended the impact of his being the main story of Time magazine.

That it happened in the midst of his preparation for his bout with Miguel Cotto reduced the hammer-hitting Puerto Rican further into a supporting role of the “Firepower” card’s pre-fight hype.

It almost seems as if mentions of Cotto have been limited to writers defending the reigning WBO welterweight champion from predictions of an early and crushing defeat and to Team Cotto’s rebuttals of Freddie Roach’s constant needling.

When Cotto hosted a media workout, there were about four rows of journalists, photographers and television crews seated in front of the ring inside the Pound4Pound gym.

When it was Pacquiao’s turn for a press preview, the number more than doubled, and they jostled for prime space around the ring inside the Wild Card gym—and Pacquiao was not even there yet. He was in the dressing room, hosting a sit-down interview with even more select foreign reporters.

“Look at the press, look at the people,” promoter Bob Arum told Examiner.com’s Michael Marley, who was part of the group that privately grilled Pacquiao. “It’s like a throwback to the days of (Muhammad) Ali, it is incredible.”

“It’s amazing,” Pacquiao said of everything that has happened so far. “I never expected any of this.”

His reply echoed his packaged statement after Time announced him as its cover.

“I absolutely had no idea that when I started my career in boxing, to provide a better life for myself and my family, that I would now be where I am today and on the cover of Time Magazine,” Pacquiao told Fightnews.com. “A fighter’s dream is to win a world title and gain financial stability. But what is happening to me now is the most humbling experience of my life.”

His public appearances have always been regarded as a distraction—the reason why his team was hesitant to hold the first part of camp in the Philippines, where he is adored like a god.

Pacquiao, though, calls it his responsibility.

“This is my responsibility being Manny Pacquiao, being famous,” he explained. “All my achievements come from God and the support of my fans.”

To repay God, he is relentless with his charity work. To repay his fans, he tries to share himself with them as much as he can without letting them get in the way of his preparation for big fights.

His team is worried he is spreading himself too thinly. Pacquiao, 30, feels he is just doing his job to prove “we are a small but mighty country.”

And the hard-hitting, rapid-punching southpaw vows to continue doing that job.

“It is an honor for me to bring honor to our country and to all Filipinos,” said the reigning pound-for-pound champion, who is the first Filipino to grace the weekly magazine’s cover since the late former President Corazon C. Aquino, regarded as the icon of democracy, but he is also the first boxer in 20 years to be accorded the honor, after Mike Tyson.