Boxing legend Manny Pacquiao's one rule about time is "don't waste it"

For Emmanuel "Manny" Pacquiao, becoming a professional boxer was only a matter of time. "Boxing is my passion," says the Filipino fighter widely known as "Pacman". "That's been my life, since I was young."

Pacquiao, the fourth of six children from General Santos City in the southern Philippines, started boxing as a way to escape poverty. "In our place, we had Sunday boxing every week, so my friends and I joined there and we would fight. I was 12 years old when I started," he says. "What I liked about my first fight was that I earned money, 50 pesos [about HK$9 today]. I never thought I would be a boxer. I just did it to earn money, to buy food or things I needed for school."

Soon enough, Pacquiao was winning fight after fight. "When I kept winning, I started to put in my mind that I can be a boxer. So that was the beginning," he says.

It was the beginning, it turns out, of one of the most successful careers in boxing history. From his 1995 professional debut in the light flyweight division to his widespread rating as the best pound-for-pound fighter on the planet, through to his surprise sixth-round knockout last year at the hands of Juan Manuel Márquez in a non-title welterweight bout, Pacquiao has won 10 world titles and become the only boxer to win world championships in eight different weight divisions.

He is a three-time Fighter of the Year and the Boxing Writers Association of America's Fighter of the Decade for the 2000s, having enjoyed a seven-year, 15-bout winning streak that ended on June 9, 2012.