Floyd Mayweather Jr. versus Manny Pacquiao is a big deal in the UAE, too.

Interest seems to be high, and most of it seems to focus on Manny. In part because the UAE is home to about 500,000 Filipinos. In part because Mayweather seems a bit arrogant, from the other side of the world. His ability to generate enormous amounts of cash for prize fights doesn’t seem to be as lauded over here as it is back home.

So, in our efforts to give readers as much of this fight as we can, today we launched a three-day series of photo essays focusing on Manny.

The pictures, never before seen in print or online, were taken by a very fine sports photographer, Mike Young, who spent 18 months as part of Team Pacquiao and, before that, was sports photo editor here at The National.

Here are the photos from Day 1: Manny the Fighter.

Those photos come from training and from Manny’s two most recent fights, versus Chris Algieri and Timothy Bradley.

In the next two days we will have another gallery, focusing on Manny away from boxing and Manny, man of the people.

You can easily find those at thenational.ae … and search for “embedded pacquiao”