By Chris Williams: Top Rank promoter Bob Arum believes that Chris Algieri (20-0, 8 KOs) is becoming known by boxing fans due to the press tours and media coverage for his fight against Arum’s fighter WBO welterweight champion Manny Pacquiao (56-5-2, 38 KOs) on November 22nd in Macau, China.
Arum says that Algieri is so well known now that he’s more recognizable than Top Rank fighter Tim Bradley by Fox Business News.
“If you watch FOX Business News, where Algieri has been on numerous occasions, which fighter they knew better – Chris Algieri or Timothy Bradley – they would say Chris Algieri,” Arum said.
Just because the crew at Fox Business News know Algieri more than Bradley doesn’t mean that the casual boxing fans are going to know Algieri or care who he is. I’m not sure how many boxing fans routinely tune in to watch Fox Business News or who even bother to watch Fox News at all.
Arum might be making a jump in speculating that because Algieri is known by people on Fox Business News, it means that he’s a widely recognizable fighter. This sounds like the same miscalculation that Arum made in thinking that boxing fans would be excited that Pacquiao fighting a guy with a high education background in Algieri.
I don’t think that’s something that fans care about at all, period. Algieri having a couple of college degrees likely doesn’t resonate with boxing fans, because they’re mainly interested in whether the fighter is good and entertaining rather than what schools he’s attended.
“With Chris Algieri getting the type of publicity that he is getting, which we never had before,” Arum said. “For example, I don’t remember recently a fight getting an article in The New Yorker magazine. This one was in last week’s New Yorker.”
This is the same kind of thing. I don’t know how many boxing fans read The New Yorker magazine. My guess is very few. Just because there’s an article about Pacquiao-Algieri fight in The New Yorker magazine, it doesn’t mean the fight is going to have a massive amount of pay-per-view buys.
Arum believes the Pacquiao vs. Algieri fight will bring in 750000 to 950000 pay-per-view buys rather than the 450,000 buys Pacquiao’s fight brought in against Brandon Rios when they fought in Macau last November. I think Arum’s obvious by a considerable amount. I see the Pacquiao-Algieri fight bringing in 300,000 to 400,000 buys at best.
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