Algieri-Pacquiao would be a huge fight, says DeGuardia

By Boxing News - 06/18/2014 - Comments

pac777By Chris Williams: Joe DeGuardia, the promoter for WBO light welterweight champion Chris Algieri (20-0, 8 KO’s), thinks that Bob Arum of Top Rank won’t be able to resist the marketability that a fight between his guy Algieiri and Arum’s No.1 money maker Manny Pacquiao will create for next November.

DeGuardia believes this fight will create a lot of interest from fans of the sport wanting to see how Pacquiao does against the younger, and taller Algieri.

“I think Bob (Arum) is the type of businessman where he can see the enormous potential of a fight between Manny and Chris,” DeGuardia said. “Chris is someone who brings something completely different to the table in terms of marketability that no other fighter can bring. It would be huge, him and Manny facing each other.”

I don’t know if this is a fight that will sell, but I do know that it’s a lot more interesting to me than seeing Pacquiao fight Juan Manuel Marquez for a fifth time. That match-up has been overplayed to the fullest by Arum, and it’s forlorn. Just because Arum can make the fight doesn’t mean he should. He should think about trying to keep Pacquiao’s fans by matching him against new guys each time out instead of trotting out 40-year-old Juan Manuel Marquez once a year to fight him.

It would be a risk for Arum to match Pacquiao against Algieri, but if this is all he has for the 35-year-old Filipino star then he should take the fight. I have a feeling that Saul “Canelo” Alvarez won’t be there for Pacquiao in November, because he’s probably going to lose to Erislandy Lara next month in their Showtime pay-per-view fight on 7/12.

Algieri is a good stay busy fight for Pacquiaio. As flawed as Pacquiao is, I’m under no illusions that someone like Algieri will beat him. He barely beat Ruslan Provodnikov, so that shows you where Algieri is in terms of ability. But he’d give Pacquiao some problems in losing to him. I’d rather see Pacquiao fight Amir Khan, Shawn Porter or Keith Thurman, but those fights aren’t going to happen. And as I said before, the Pacquiao-Marquez series needs to buried already and never restarted. If that’s all Arum’s got then it’s pretty sad.



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