He’s now being compared to Muhammad Ali. That’s our champion, of course, Manny Pacquiao.

It’s Bob Arum who has been making the comparison. Of course, it is in the nature of Arum, or in the interest of his business, to speak in hyperboles. He says Pacquaio may not just equal Ali, he may even surpass him. He has seen fighters who are quick and fighters who are strong, he says, but he hasn’t seen anybody with both the kind of speed and explosiveness Pacquiao has shown. Not even Ali, who might have been lightning-quick but who wasn’t quite as explosive.

Arum might be one to speak in hyperboles, but the hyperboles in this case are completely justified. If Pacquiao goes on to beat Juan Manuel Marquez and Floyd Mayweather Jr., the only remaining obstacles in his path, he will be the greatest pound-for-pound fighter of his time. Particularly if he does it in the same fashion as he did Oscar de la Hoya and Ricky Hatton. Marquez because Pacquiao has yet to beat him convincingly, and Mayweather because, despite having just emerged from retirement, he holds the title as the best pound-for-pound fighter of his time.

I myself have no doubt Pacquiao will be able to do that in time. He’s already a living legend at 30. And completely unlike other fighters, time has not been unkind to him. The older he grows, the faster and stronger he becomes—a phenomenon by itself. I believe Freddie Roach entirely when he says the Pacquaio that fought Marquez is not the Pacquiao that fought De la Hoya and Hatton, and that if they were to meet now, Pacquiao would give Marquez a lesson in boxing such as he had never learned before. Pacquiao hasn’t gotten the worse for wear, he’s gotten the better for wear. He’s so much faster and stronger now, breaking the weight-class barriers with impunity.

The great Sugar Ray Leonard confirms Pacquiao’s legendary status by saying that people do not seem to fully appreciate what he has done, which is to win in four weight classes in as many fights. He (Leonard) himself hadn’t done it. No one has done it. That alone, he says, is a feat by itself. To do so moreover in spectacular form, to demolish all obstacles that lie in the path, it is nothing short of a miracle.

But all that said, I myself wouldn’t put Pacquiao in the same league as Ali—yet. That is so because Ali fought in one weight class no boxer did before him and no boxer has done so after him. One no boxer will probably ever do again. No, that isn’t the heavyweight class, that is something far more weighty than the heavyweight class. That is the weight class of—Life.

Ali’s greatest fight was not with Sonny Liston or George Foreman, though they were the most fearsome fighters of their time. Liston, an ex-convict, had the face and body you wouldn’t want to see in a dark alley. And Foreman, well, his fight with Joe Frazier said it all: an uppercut literally lifted Frazier’s feet off the ground and sent him sprawling on the canvas.

But, no, Ali’s greatest fight was not with them. Ali’s greatest fight was with the US government. A government that wanted him to fight people “who never did me any harm,” who were the Vietnamese. When in fact, Ali said, it was White America that had done him a lot more harm. He said no, and paid dearly for it.

The US government was Ali’s mightiest foe, the one that put him in the ropes for a while, stripping him of his title as the undefeated heavyweight champion of the world, jailing him, and attempting to turn him into a social pariah. The US government was Ali’s bitterest foe, the one that carried the face of an executioner uglier than Liston’s or Foreman’s, the one that tried to bully him into submission with all the weapons in its arsenal.

That was Ali’s biggest fight. Bigger than the “Rumble in the Jungle,” bigger than the “Thrilla in Manila.” Ali was fighting tyranny. And he was fighting not just for personal glory but for the hopes of a people longing to be free.

For all his dazzling accomplishments, Paquiao hasn’t quite come near to that. Indeed, right now, he is as far from it as this regime is to being recognized as legitimate, never mind a legitimate contender for the pinweight division in governance.

Ali fought a battle for something larger than boxing. For principle, for conscience, for what is transcendent in all of us. And for at least three years, it was a lonely fight, he had few people in his corner, having been abandoned by fawners and hangers-on, quite apart from promoters and advertisers. Truly you know your real friends when you are in that state. In the end, he was rewarded with a victory far more resonant than anything any boxer has known, he was honored for accomplishments more awesome than anything he ever did in the ring.

Pacquaio, well, it doesn’t help that he kept the company of that sorry crew of public officials that surrounded him in Las Vegas, who looked far more abject than the losers in the casinos of that place notwithstanding that they strutted around like peacocks and affected the affectations of the moneyed. It doesn’t help that he keeps the company of that sorry crew of people in Malacañang who claim to be his patrons, who presume to stand on the same level with him when all they have done is to gain worldwide renown for stealing, though they have become superstars and legends at it. It doesn’t help that he keeps talking about uniting the people and ending divisiveness, when all it means is reconciling with oppression and abuse and preserving the rule of the one person who rightly predicted that if she remained in power, she would be the most divisive force this country has ever known.

But who knows? Maybe Pacquiao can still change and become a true people’s champion. But right now, he’s not quite Ali yet.

Not by a full 12 rounds.