By Chris Williams: Top Rank promoter Bob Arum is starting to show some concerns about having matched his No.1 money fighter WBO welterweight champion Manny Pacquiao (56-5-2, 38 KOs) with possibly the wrong guy in scheduling him to face the younger, taller, longer-armed, and highly mobile Chris Algieri (20-0, 8 KOs) on November 22nd at the Venetian Casino & Resort, Macao, Macao S.A.R., China.
Arum isn’t coming right out and saying that he messed up, but he’s starting to show some serious worry about Pacquiao getting whipped by Algieri and exposed like he was by Juan Manuel Marquez 4 times and Tim Bradley.
“It is not an easy fight. Algieri moves very well,” Arum said via Philboxing.com.
Algieri was picked out by Arum for this fight because he sees it as some kind of Rocky story where he selects a guy that you’d never expect to fight for the title and he gives it his all in a once in a lifetime shot. But Algieri is more than just some guy with no chance. He actually has the size, speed, youth and defensive skills to give Pacquiao fits in the ring.
Algieri has already said that he’s going to foil Pacquiao and make him look his age by using his jab and movement on him. Algieri wants to jab Pacquiao’s face constantly and keep him from getting close enough to land his harder shots. Algieri’s reach advantage of 5 inches is going to make it difficult for Pacquiao to get near enough to land anything. But also the movement from Algieri is going to make it a twice as difficult fight for Pacquiao to deal with.
Trainer Freddie Roach, a person with a keen eye at selecting beatable opposition for the Filipino star, tried to tell Arum that Algieri was a difficult fighter for Pacquiao to fight because of his movement, but Arum went with Algieri anyway. Now Roach is stuck trying to figure out a game plan for Pacquiao to beat Algieri, and he may not be able to come up with anything. Algieri is like a bigger, more mobile version of Tim Bradley.
What’s going to make it tough on Pacquiao is that Algieri will have done his homework well by the time he gets in the ring with him on November 22nd, and will know exactly what Pacquiao’s weaknesses are. He’ll then go on the attack and look to expose those areas.
Movement is obviously the first thing that Algieri will be doing. He’s going to make the soon to be 36-year-old Pacquiao use his wheels to get around the ring, and the more he moves the better the chances that he starts cramping up and slowing down.
If Pacquiao cramps up against Algieri, then he’s going to get out-boxed and easily beat. Pacquiao would be stuck in a situation where he would be totally stationary and unable to follow Algieri around the ring without cramping up even worse.
If Pacquiao loses this fight then he’s pretty much going to need to retire because there would be nowhere to go unless he wants to fight some more of Arum’s stable fighters.
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