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ARLINGTON, Texas — Manny Pacquiao began this past Saturday at a morning Mass — the medieval Spanish Catholic kind that borders on mystic, the kind that blesses a boxer's gold groin protector in front of five-hundred Filipinos like it were a newborn. He ended it not having needed much blessed protection from anything, a puffy eye the only residue from a pummeling — and I think 1,231 punches, including one 36-hit combination I counted from ringside, counts as a pummeling — of Joshua Clottey to retain the welterweight championship of the world.

What he needed was another helping of tinolang manok — the chicken-broth soup with special leaves from his native Philippines that he eats for almost every meal, that has bulked him up through seven different weight classes, all of which he has dominated and another one of which he could probably conquer, too. But there he was, all 5'6" and 145 of him: the greatest and unlikeliest pound-for-pound fighter in the world, standing in the middle of Cowboys Stadium on the receiving end of some Texas-style pageantry, loving every second of it. "Michael Irvin has an aura — he had a way to create energy," Jerry Jones told me. "Manny has that. I know what 'it' is. It's taking a talent and maximizing that talent and walking the walk. That's what he is: He walks in, and has that aura." Ross Greenburg, president of HBO Sports, likened him more to Ali. "Reminds me of a time I was walking with Muhammad Ali and he literally stopped traffic," he told me. "People were mesmerized, and it is the same with Manny."

That's because Manny Pacquiao likes to have a good time. Good times are what make him so good. He is the lead singer in a band that, despite its lead singer's high-pitched crackle of a voice, has sold more than a million albums. (His trainer, Freddie Roach, has invoked a 9 P.M. "karaoke curfew" leading up to fights.) He is in the best shape of his life, despite what rival Floyd Mayweather Jr. would have you believe. ("He is accusing me of using drugs or whatever and trying to ruin my name in boxing," Pacquiao says. "Maybe he is afraid of me or maybe is not ready for this fight.") He is running for Congress back home, despite the fact that 21 people were killed on their way to file candidacy papers four months ago in the kidnap-happy Philippines. ("He's a rock star, but he's still hungry," Roach says.)

All this laughing from a 31-year-old man who beats up people for a living and comes from, well, shit, and kind of still likes it that way. Pacquiao's father, having already eaten the family dog, abandoned his family, leaving Manny to stow away on a boat headed for Manila, where he barely made enough money as a laborer to buy a daily bowl of rice. At 16, he found a degree of solace at a 24-hour boxing gym, if only because it smelled a bit less like sweat than the construction site where he worked and slept. Now, despite the Beverly Hills mansion where he lives with his wife and four children, Pacquiao shacks up with fourteen other men at a small apartment during training camp. A couple of guys sleep right at the foot of his bed. Good times.

Good times are especially important right before a big fight. Like the last two months — much of which I've spent by his side, too — when his practice boxers pretended to be Joshua Clottey, Saturday nights's opponent. In the Wild Card Boxing Club, a dank Los Angeles gym with old newspaper clippings plastered to the walls, the sparring partners would come forward and hit Pacquiao, if only for him to try out his new line: Bababababababa came the scream, and then ratatattat came his fists' counterattack. One day another guinea pig dealt him a low blow. Pacquiao tends to bite his lower lip and pound his gloves together when he's hurt, but this time he just knocked the guy silly — so silly the guy could barely talk fifteen minutes later. I asked Roach, the head trainer, how hard Pacquiao really works in sparring sessions. "Maybe sixty percent," he said. "He can fuckin' hit."

Pacquiao likes to play basketball (he owns a team), play poker (he sponsors a tournament), chat endlessly on his cell phone ("Manny, Mike Tyson wants to talk to you."), and work on that croon of his with a voice coach (she often tells him to warm up his tongue by rolling his r's like a crazed cricket), but he mostly spends his days at the gym. His trainers have a difficult time slowing him down: up early to run a few miles and do sprint work at a Los Angeles public high-school track, followed in the afternoon by a grueling three-hour workout with heavy bag work, sparring, plyometrics, shadow-boxing, jump-roping, work on the speed bags, and some other guy hitting him with a bamboo pole. One of those other guys is Buboy Fernandez, a childhood friend whom Pacquiao found homeless on the street one day and turned into a trainer. Other other guys hold his comb, take care of his diamond earring, fluff his rice, hang up his exercise mat, and walk his Jack Russell terrier, named Pacman. All this and a lot of winking from a man who has only been boxing professionally for fifteen years and speaking English for four but still loves to yell "Fuck you!" at his fitness trainer after stomach crunches. That's probably because he does 1,400 of them a day. He starts every round by crossing himself, and ends every training session with a prayer. On Sundays, Manny rests.

On Saturday night, of course, he was pretty relaxed anyway. Roach, a four-time trainer of the year and not a bad fighter himself, told me he'd never seen a boxer this happy this close to a title bout. I couldn't help but believe him: Here was a young man who used to sell doughnuts on Manila street corners making bad jokes for his buddies as he wrapped his own hands in tape so tight they were practically purple — while the Dallas Cowboys cheerleaders were checking him out. (They also sung the national anthem.) "But when he enters the ring and crosses himself," Roach reminded me, "it's all business." And it was. From ringside, you could barely even follow Pacquiao's red gloves, made from leather and woven horsehair, they were moving so fast. Clottey actually chose a particular type of padded glove just to help defend his face — not that he went down, but not that he stood much of a chance in the decision either. "He is fast. He is fast," Clottey said after the fight. "He is strong, too."

Pacquiao, for his part, already had his sunglasses back on as his guys sped him off back to Mass. There was no time to waste, after all: His band had a big show on Saturday night, too. Boxers never like to go to bed early because that much unencumbered adrenaline running through a man's system can kill him. Pacquiao told me his first song would be "La Bamba," and that the concert would go well into the night.

Gary Andrew Poole has written for The New York Times, Time, and The Atlantic. He is writing a biography of Manny Pacquiao.