MANILA, Sept 8 (Reuters) – Boxing great Manny Pacquiao spent decades throwing punches in the boxing ring. From Tuesday, the Filipino sports icon will \u200cdirect his fight at a more enduring opponent: poverty.<\/p>\n
Pacquiao joined President Ferdinand \u200cMarcos Jr.’s cabinet on Tuesday as head of the government’s anti-poverty agency, vowing to help Filipinos facing \u200bhardships all too familiar to him.<\/p>\n
The 47-year-old former senator was appointed lead convener of the National Anti-Poverty Commission (NAPC), his first cabinet post after a long political career that included service in Congress and the Senate, an unsuccessful 2022 presidential run and a \u200cfailed bid to return to the \u2060Senate in 2025 as part of Marcos’ administration-backed ticket.<\/p>\n
As NAPC chief, Pacquiao will coordinate government efforts to reduce poverty, which he said \u2060he understands firsthand.<\/p>\n
“I came from poverty. I experienced sleeping on cardboard on the streets, drinking only water, having nothing to eat, and saving loose coins just to help \u200bmy family,” Pacquiao \u200bsaid in a statement.<\/p>\n
Pacquiao, who came from \u200bimpoverished beginnings, worked as a \u200cship stowaway and fought on the streets as a boy, earning $2 per fight. His net worth was $220 million last year, according to a Sports Illustrated article.<\/p>\n
He takes over the anti-poverty agency as the Marcos administration seeks to cut poverty incidence to 8-9% by 2028. Government data showed the rate fell to 9.7% in 2025, equivalent to \u200cabout 11.08 million Filipinos living below the poverty \u200bline.<\/p>\n
The only boxer to win world titles in \u200beight weight divisions, Pacquiao remains among \u200bthe Philippines’ most revered sporting figures, with his biggest fights \u200cdrawing everyone from presidents and Hollywood stars \u200bto ordinary Filipinos, \u200boften bringing the nation of 119 million people to a standstill.<\/p>\n
The southpaw retired in 2021 but returned to the ring in July 2025 to face Mario \u200bBarrios for the WBC \u200cwelterweight championship on July 19 in Las Vegas. He was inducted into \u200bthe International Boxing Hall of Fame in 2025.<\/p>\n
(Reporting by Karen Lema \u200band Nestor Corrales; Editing by Michael Perry)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"MANILA, Sept 8 (Reuters) – Boxing great Manny Pacquiao spent decades throwing punches in the boxing ring. From…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":887661,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[447],"tags":[975,703,49,48,307955,279107,55541,307956,77851,708,307954,7501,307953,32387,82,35899],"class_list":["post-887660","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-boxing","tag-975","tag-boxing","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-ferdinand","tag-filipino","tag-filipinos","tag-jr-s","tag-manila","tag-manny-pacquiao","tag-napc","tag-pacquiao","tag-pacquiao-said","tag-reuters","tag-sports","tag-tuesday"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/887660","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=887660"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/887660\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/887661"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=887660"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=887660"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=887660"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}