Manny Pacquiao doesn't have an entourage. He has a travelling cult. The hangers-on wedged in his corner during fights have the habit of bursting into tears when things start going wrong. There are so many retainers, it's not clear what any one of them specifically does. They fight among themselves for the right to wash the boss's car or fetch his slippers.
Famously, Pacquiao does not sleep alone during training camp. One of his vassals is always with him, curled up at the foot of his bed like a dog. It's considered the highest honour in Pacquiaoland.
"It does get a little … [long pause] … funny sometimes," Pacquiao's trainer, Freddie Roach, said Thursday.
This is probably emotional spillover from Pacquiao's childhood. He grew up in the Philippines in crushing poverty. His favourite word to describe that time is "starving," meant to work on levels that go beyond hunger.
When he first started cashing fight cheques, he took full, disastrous advantage of the nightlife opportunities provided by stardom. He claims God came to him in a vision, and he changed.
All this neediness, coupled with Pacquiao's millenarian brand of born-again Christianity, has given him the aura of a crusading martyr.
After being knocked unconscious by Juan Manuel Marquez in 2012, Pacquiao refused to get in an ambulance until he was allowed to wash the blood off his face. More than most, he understands the power of symbolism.
Pacquiao does not engage in the sort of verbal provocations that make the lead-up to a big fight so much fun. He's too saintly for that. But, in his sackcloth way, he's still able to irk the competition.
At his introductory presser, Pacquiao said that after Saturday's fight, he'd like to huddle with Floyd Mayweather to discuss "faith."
Mayweather – who's seemed out of sorts here all week – grumbled afterward that, "This fight is not good versus evil."
Sure, it is. Every prizefight is. That's why they call it boxing instead of hugging.
That Mayweather is unwilling to embrace his role may be the first sign of weakness. That's how Roach described it.
Pacquiao, 36, and Roach, 55, may be the most beloved odd couple in sports. They met 15 years ago, with Pacquiao playing the supplicant. Roach asked for tapes of his fights, for assessment purposes. Pacquiao gave him two – he'd been knocked out in both.
It was an odd sort of job interview – "He wanted to show me the worst part," Roach marvelled – but it worked.
In the years since, the relationship flipped. Swimming in his charge's wake, Roach has become one of perhaps a dozen faces to transcend the sport over the past three decades.
He was a capable fighter himself, noted for being able to take a punch. That tendency led to Parkinson's disease. After the symptoms began, Roach fought a half-dozen more times. The Western world is getting softer. In reply, boxers stay hard.
Roach retired at 26, physically broken but still an impish presence. He provides the bulk of the fun factor for both camps.
A sample swipe at Mayweather: "I've fallen asleep at a couple of his fights before."
Where Pacquiao gives off a dull, churchish glow, Roach is all blinding sunshine.
Everybody here has to fit a stereotype. Roach is the thwarted aspirant, the guy who's been knocked down and gets up so that he can be knocked down again. People who are put off by this sport see it as sadism. Instead, it's heroic masochism. Getting knocked down is the point.
Roach's visible infirmities – slurred speech, head tilted painfully to one side – make him impervious to direct attack. Every shot at him feels cheap. Conceptually armoured, Roach has a wide latitude to act as Pacquiao's proxy braggart.
On Thursday, he disguised his contempt for Mayweather in sympathy.
"I don't really think he wants to fight us in this fight. I think he was forced to fight this fight by [his broadcast partner] Showtime. They were losing money. They needed a deal like this," Roach said.
Then he went further.
"After the first press conference, as I was driving home, I was thinking, 'He's not going to show up. He's just way too nice,'" Roach said, metaphorically mooning Mayweather. "I hope this fight happens. I think we're too close now. I don't think he's going to pull out this close."
It's a preposterous suggestion. Only Roach could get away with it.
On the other side is Floyd Mayweather's trainer, his father, Floyd Sr. He's also been diminished by a long career in the ring. He's just as hard to understand. Considering his dysfunctional relationship with Floyd Jr., he may be more tragic.
At the first presser, Roach was allowed to speak, while Floyd Sr. sat in the audience. At the end, he hobbled up on stage and tried to take a place at the podium. When he realized no one was listening, he slunk to the back.
On Thursday, he tried to do for Floyd Jr. what Roach does for Pacquiao. It's difficult not to cast this contest in the more brutal archetypes of fathers and sons.
"Ain't nothing he said moved me," Mayweather Sr. said of Roach, and then spent 20 minutes demonstrating that it had moved him quite a bit.
Floyd Sr. is noted for his poetry. He likes to give the impression that he's spun it on the spot, in the tradition of rap battling.
He ended with a self-congratulatory sonnet (the sidekick on stage was mouthing the words along with him, like a street dramaturge).
"I'm the best, I must confess; All the rest, there's no contest; I'll shock your mind, I'm one of a kind; I'm the greatest trainer of all time …"
It was too late. Roach had pre-emptively deflated him.
"His poems? They're cute. I don't like cute so much from another guy."
It is a formidable duo – Roach does the talking; Pacquiao stands well behind him providing the muscle. Mayweather can't counter any of it – the cleverness, the mystique or the simple appearance of goodness.
But he doesn't have to. He's lost the lead-up. No one will remember that if Mayweather wins the fight.