MANILA: Fans of boxer Manny Pacquiao have a new way of showing how much they love the boxing superstar — by eating him or a life-size replica cake at least.

Zach Yonzon, his wife Aila, and six of his staff helped finish the 167cm chocolate cake on Saturday after working 24 hours at The Bunny Baker cafe in suburban Quezon City.

Yonzon says it was his wife’s idea to bake the cake to commemorate the mega-fight against Floyd Mayweather, which will be on Sunday morning Philippines time.

“Manny Pacquiao is world class, so we wanted to do something equally world class and the only way to do that is to create a cake that was extraordinary,” he said.

The cake will be handed out free to customers and friends of the couple after the fight. The 41-year-old said the biggest challenges were their lack of experience in making life-size statues and formal training in cake design.

Getting the likeness right was the easy part for Yonzon, who is a graduate of the Philippine High School for the Arts.

“The truth is I get really bored with normal cakes,” Yonzon said.

“I wanted really something really, really challenging ... and a life-sized Manny cake is about as challenging and exciting as the cakes come and this is a perfect opportunity to do that”.

“I just needed to do something out of the box,” added the former blogger for AOL. He said he based the image of Pacquiao, including a tattoo of a glove on the boxer’s left chest, on pictures available on the Internet. The cake is built around a wooden frame covered in cling wrap.

He said parts of the head and the arms and the calves were made of Rice Krispies. “It will be interesting to get people’s reactions cutting and eating Manny Pacquiao,” he said, laughing.

“My wife said we will start with the torso”.

Published in Dawn, May 3rd, 2015

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