INQUIRER Sports

SACRAMENTO ? He graced the cover of last week?s Asian edition of Time magazine?only the second Filipino after the ?Saint of Democracy? Corazon Aquino, to be accorded such a tribute.

He is currently part of athletic wear powerhouse Nike?s Pound for Pound advertising blitz worldwide, in the elite company of sports megastars Kobe Bryant, LeBron James and Rafael Nadal.

He has hammed it up with Jimmy Kimmel on the ABC network?s late-night show without ending up as fodder for the host?s one-liners.

He is so huge a media draw, even the New York Times, which one observer noted covers ?boxing as often as Haley?s comet comes around,? featured him and his trainer in its Sunday edition.

So why is Manny Pacquiao?s street-savvy promoter and his hired publicity guns still unloading more promotional fusillade for his world welterweight title fight against Puerto Rico?s Miguel Cotto this Saturday night (Sunday morning in Manila)?

It?s all about the pay-per-view numbers, you know.

The more people get ensnared by Pacmania, the more chances the Manny-Miguel fight, dubbed ?Firepower,? at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas gets seared into the minds of boxing fans.

The hope is for legions of fans other than the ardent ones to reach for their pockets and keep HBO?s cash register ringing for more than one million PPV buys up to the first bell of ?Firepower.?

The key here is to notch more than 1 million subscribers at $54.95 a pop to surpass this year?s Floyd Mayweather Jr.-Juan Manuel Marquez fight which did one million PPV buys.

Mayweather is convinced he?s boxing?s biggest marquee name today, not the Filipino fighter because the money man?s one-sided victory over Marquez did better in PPV than the Pacquiao-Marquez sequel (405,000 PPV buys) and the Pacquiao-Hatton match (850,000).

Should Pacquiao get past Cotto impressively, a fight with Mayweather Jr. could be in the cards. And this is where the simple arithmetic enters the picture.

If Bob Arum finally gets into a talking mode with the Mayweather camp for the money split from what would be boxing?s biggest and most lucrative fight, he would have more leverage on the bargaining table if ?Firepower? surpasses Mayweather-Marquez in terms of PPV receipts.

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Our insensitive solons, led by their exalted leader Prospero Nograles are expected to be in choice seats, if not ringside again for the Pacquiao-Cotto fight.

These congressmen are again rewarding themselves at their own expense, (so they say) and jet across the Pacific just to be Manny?s rah-rah boys come fight time.

Never mind the series of typhoons that have ravaged the country, darn it. The business of the people can wait.

We are posing this question to you again.

Is your congressman missing in action? Slog through the endless commercials come fight time Sunday morning. You are likely to know about your congressman?s whereabouts while watching the fight on tape delay.