There’s a lot more than boxing to Manny Pacquiao

Along about 10:15 Saturday night, Manny Pacquiao of the Philippines will walk down the aisle of a massive American football stadium toward a boxing ring. There will be 60,000 people there, many screaming for his blood. He will be facing a bigger, stronger man who has little to lose.

As he walks, Pacquiao will be smiling.

Most boxers enter with stern looks. They are told to focus. This is serious business. It is dangerous. It is their livelihood, often their only means of feeding their families. To smile at a time like this is unusual, even bad luck.

But Pacquiao isn’t just any boxer. He is the most famous one in the world, and probably the best. He is wealthy beyond anybody’s imagination, especially his. He started boxing as homeless teenager, sleeping on a cardboard mat in Manila and trying to fight his way to his next meal.

After he is finished Saturday, winning or losing to opponent Antonio Margarito, he will pocket yet another $20 million. In his previous 12 pay-per-view fights, he has generated $321 million in gross revenue from the televised buys.

But that is not why he is smiling.

When devout Catholic Pacquiao walks toward the ring, he has already given his fate to God. Nothing to fear. Faith negates pressure. The last few steps, he thinks about all the people in the Philippines who are counting on him. That is his psych job, where the boxing fury comes from. Just before the battle begins, he kneels in his corner in quick prayer.

The religious nature of the ringside routine is not just show. He will not train in a gym without a cross on the wall. Every night, between 8 and 10, he makes time to pray. Pacquiao leased a Boeing 757 to come from Los Angeles to Dallas for the Margarito fight, and included in the 200 on the plane was his prayer group.

The religious side is only part of what is less known about Pacquiao.

He is superstitious. He always leaves the same day from Los Angeles for a fight, Monday of fight week, and always travels the same way. Before he beat Joshua Clottey in his last fight in March, also at Cowboys Stadium, he leased a plane and transported a similar group of about 200, many friends of friends. He didn’t even know perhaps as many as 120 of them.

When he fights in Las Vegas, he always drives himself. When HBO does its “24/7” feature on his fights, it films his Monday departure with him climbing on his special Pacquiao bus and it driving off. About a half mile down the road, the bus will stop, Pacquiao will get off, climb into his car and drive the rest of the way.

He has a passion for other sports.

A concern for trainer Freddie Roach in preparations for this fight was that Pacquiao was constantly playing basketball with his friends. He is a good little player with a lefty jump shot. He owns a pro basketball team in his home country and even plays on it once in a while, and they usually let him make a couple of layups.

During a promotional tour in Chicago, Pacquiao ordered his bus to take a side trip to the United Center, so he could see the statue of Michael Jordan.

He owns a huge farm in the hills about a half hour from his home in General Santos City. On it, he has several thousand fighting cocks. His staff trains, feeds and breeds the birds. Each rooster is tied by one leg to a peg, next to a foot-high, teepee-shaped shelter. There are rows and rows of gamecocks, as far as the eye can see.

There is a small stadium with bleachers, with a scoreboard alongside. Legal in the Philippines, cockfighting often holds a major tournament in Manila, the World Slasher Derby, and Pacquiao’s birds often compete. A visitor to the farm last spring was given a five-fight exhibition, but the birds were not fitted with the leg knife used during real competition. Still, winners and losers were easy to identify.

A while later, dinner was served in a nearby dining room. Nothing was said, but dinner appeared to be the exhibition losers.

Some other Pacquiao nuggets:

His favorite dog is a Russell terrier, named Pac-Man, of course.

At home, he is guarded by the Philippine military around the clock. That began long before he was elected to Congress because, as a boxing star, the government decreed him a national treasure.

He eats at least one portion of chicken and rice every day. He also preaches good health and once challenged his entourage, the dozens around him, to lose 10% of their body weight. Doing so would bring $3,000 to each achiever. In the end, he paid out around $70,000.

As a congressman and a world-famous athlete, security concerns are acute for Pacquiao, who often travels in a bulletproof car in a convoy. The day the visitor went to the cockfighting ranch, he asked a Pacquiao aide about security, citing frequent violence in a country of great political and social divide. The aide said Pacquiao is safe.

“Our guns are bigger than their guns,” he said.

Also reason to smile, entering the boxing ring.

bill.dwyre@latimes.com