New Pacquiao film is a rags-to-riches story

MANILA, Philippines: As a dirt-poor rookie boxer in the southern Philippines, Manny Pacquiao started his phenomenal rise to global fame not as the Pacman, as he is sometimes called, but as “Kid Kulafu.”
That moniker is the title of a new local film about Pacquiao’s childhood.
“Kid Kulafu” opened Wednesday in more than 70 theaters across the Philippines starting ahead of Pacquiao’s May 2 megafight with Floyd Mayweather. It will be shown in some US and Canadian theaters beginning April 24.
Produced with advice and other assistance from Pacquiao, the film depicts the impoverished world he grew up in well before he became the world’s only eight-division boxing champion, one of its highest-paid athletes and the wealthiest member of the Philippine House of Representatives. “He had every excuse in the book to fail — broken family, no food, no home, nowhere to go, no money, but he still persevered, and that’s what I want the people to see — that he is where he is today because of hard work,” filmmaker Paul Soriano told The Associated Press.
The 36-year-old boxer was born in a thatch-roofed house with a dirt floor in the mountains of southern Bukidnon province at a time when anti-communist militiamen were battling insurgents. One brutal clash near the Pacquiao home forced the family to move to General Santos city, into a shack owned by his uncle, Sardo Mejia.
There often was not enough food for the family; sometimes they ate boiled rice paired with fish entrails or corn on the cob. In the movie, militiamen compel Pacquiao’s mother to hand over two small fried fish she had prepared for her family.
Pacquiao’s father later abandoned the family, leaving Manny, the eldest of three brothers, to find a livelihood like most young boys in the country’s rural areas. He sold fried peanuts, bread and doughnuts made by his mother, and earned a little money of his own by gathering and selling tiny native lemons called calamansi.
Pacquiao became drawn to boxing after he started watching Betamax tapes of world heavyweight fights with his uncle. Mejia encouraged Pacquiao to box and later trained him, though his mother hated the sport.
Ironically, Pacquiao’s road to boxing was partially paved by his mother when she was struck by a heart attack, Soriano said. The movie depicts the boy entering a fight to win 100 pesos (about $2) needed to buy her medicine.