Manny Pacquiao was nearing his date with destiny with Floyd Mayweather when he agreed to fight Chris Algieri at the Cotai Arena in Macau on November 23, 2014.
Algieri, disrupting the best-laid plans, had secured his fight with one of the finest of all fighters five months earlier when defeating Russia’s Ruslan Provodnikov to win the WBO super-lightweight title and to record his greatest victory.
GettyAlgieri took on Pacquiao on the biggest night of his career[/caption]
Mayweather and Pacquiao had fought the best of their era while they resisted agreeing terms with each other; Algieri, then undefeated and 30 years old, was the final opponent for either of them before they shared a ring.
“I never saw myself fighting Manny Pacquiao,” the American told talkSPORT. “When I was young and climbing the ranks I was, ‘That’s the guy – I’m gonna fight Floyd Mayweather one day’.
“There was two guys at the time – Mayweather and Pacquiao. But Pacquiao fought Marco Antonio Barrera; Erik Morales; so small, by comparison. I never expected him to be anywhere near my orbit.
“Then the fourth Juan Manuel Marquez fight happened, and he got starched. Then, [two years later] he’s fighting me. He was 35. But, he wasn’t old.”
Algieri had been the underdog against the heavy-handed, aggressive Provodnikov – also known as the ‘Siberian Rocky’ – at Brooklyn’s Barclays Center that June, but he instead recovered from suffering two knockdowns in the opening round and resisted his right eye swelling shut because of a broken orbital bone to earn a split decision that changed his life.
“Bob Arum [the promoter, for Top Rank] doesn’t play checkers, he plays chess,” Algieri continued. “He always thinks in advance. His idea was that Ruslan Provodnikov was going to decimate me, in Brooklyn, in front of my hometown fans, and then he was going to get the Pacquiao fight.
“Before I even got up there [for my post-fight press conference], Bob says, ‘I’d like to see that Algieri kid fight Manny Pacquiao’. That lights the picture ablaze. The very first question I get is, ‘How’s the eye?’.
“After the eye situation, it’s, ‘How do you feel about fighting Manny Pacquiao?’, and I said, ‘Yeah, of course’. That was pretty much how the fight got sold.”
Recognising the magnitude of their contest and, above all else, the interest that existed in Pacquiao, HBO recorded a 24/7 series to document both fighters’ build-up to their fight.
“It was mind-bending,” Algieri recalled. “People say, ‘How was the Manny Pacquiao fight?’ I say, ‘It wasn’t a fight, it was an experience’, because it was months of preparation.
Star BoxingProvodnikov was Algieri’s hardest hitting rival[/caption]
“We did a seven-city press tour. Private jets. It was out of control. They had us shooting pool and hitting home-run derbies. It was like nothing I’d ever experienced.
“I was getting raked over the coals. ‘This guy’s a 30-year-old world champion; he’s going to be a millionaire, and he lives in his parents’ basement.’
“The HBO crew came to my house, and were like, ‘I get why you didn’t move out – this place is great’. My background – Italian-Argentinian culture – you don’t leave until you get married.
“Preparing for Manny Pacquiao is nearly impossible. There’s literally no one who fights like him. I got all the sparring partners that Tim Bradley and everybody used to fight him – it’s not the same thing. Being in the ring with him is an entirely different thing.
“I had a lot of roadblocks in camp. It was the worst camp of my career – to fight Manny Pacquiao. But I didn’t have a choice. Healing from that injury properly to get ready for fight night was really, really difficult, and then I had a lot of outside influences, because it was the first time being at that level. In terms of what a real professional camp is supposed to look like, it was not a good camp.”
Algieri, who had moved up to welterweight to fight the Filipino for the WBO 147lbs title, was, on account of his superior height and reach, marketed as bigger than Pacquiao, enhancing his appreciation for Pacquiao’s dimensions when in Macau, Hong Kong, they finally weighed in.
GettyBut Pacquiao was Algieri’s best opponent flattening him six times[/caption]
“I remember standing next to him on the scales and saying, ‘This guy’s bigger than me – everybody says he’s small’,” he said. “I couldn’t believe what he looked like – we’d done the press tour together three months prior. He looked super human – it was crazy, how muscular and thick he was.”
He was ultimately knocked down six times throughout the course of a one-sided fight that was followed by terms being agreed for Mayweather-Pacquiao for May 2015 in Las Vegas.
He retired in 2021 at the conclusion of a 29-fight career that earned him an induction into the New York State Boxing Hall of Fame; increasingly, in his roles with ProBox TV and Top Rank, he is recognised as among the most articulate of commentators.
“I was really impressed with his boxing and understanding that he’s a rhythm fighter,” Algieri reflected of the 12 rounds he shared with Pacquiao. “I’m a rhythm fighter as well.
Once I found his rhythm I could see him realise it, and then he’d change it up. He was very good at off-beat rhythm. Even though that style looks random, it’s not – he’s very much in tune.
“Once I got my crosshairs on him he realised it immediately and made an adjustment. I hit him a couple of times to the body and I could tell he didn’t like it – he was very uncomfortable in the ring with me, and very dialled in.
“But I could also sense when he was aware of me finding him. His ability to stay just a hair ahead of me, all night long, made it a blowout. I wasn’t in that fight at all.
“Not the hardest puncher – that was [Provodnikov]. But Pacquiao was, far and away, the best fighter I ever fought. I’d trained hard; I was in good shape, which is why I made the distance.
“I’ve watched it back one time – it was a horrible watch. I’m embarrassed by that performance because I know I’m better than that night. I cried.”
