By Chris Williams: Manny Pacquiao (56-5-2, 38 KOs) isn’t all that impressed with the Master’s degree that his opponent Chris Algieri (20-0, 8 KOs) has going for him. Pacquiao says he has a Master’s degree in boxing from his many years as a pro. Pacquiao started his pro career in 1995, and he feels that experience puts him in the class of a Master’s degree holder.
Pacquiao also says he has an honorary doctorate degree. Unfortunately, there’s a big difference between someone that earns a Masters or Doctorate degree than a situation where someone well-known is giving an honorary degree.
As for Pacquiao’s greater experience being the equivalent of a Master’s degree, I’m not so sure that it is. When a fighter picks up a lot of experience through a massive amount of fights, those fights tend to wear the fighter down rather than improving him.
A fighter with a ton of experience becomes more like an old car with a bunch a miles on it rather than someone who is better for it. You know how it is when a car gets old, don’t you? You get the backfiring, the blue smoke coming out of the back end, and the car can break down any time.
“So what if Algieri has a Master’s degree?” Pacquiao said via Philstar.com. “I have a Master’s degree in boxing. I’ve been fighting since 1995. I’ve done over 60 fights. My experience speaks for itself. I also have a doctorate, honoris causa, in human kinetics from Southwestern University (Cebu).”
What Algieri’s Master’s degree shows you is that he’s a very, very smart person who can think on his feet. He’s not going to do something stupid like plant his feet and start slugging like we saw from Pacquiao’s last two opponents Brandon Rios and Tim Bradley. Algieri is going to use his intelligent brain to out-box Pacquiao, and make him miss all night long.
Aligieri’s intelligence is going to likely give Pacquiao fits in this fight, and have him at his wits end trying to figure out what to do. He’s got his trainer Freddie Roach to give him advice between rounds, but it seems like a lot of the advice that Roach has is for Pacquiao to fight with more aggression like he did when he was in his 20s. I’m not sure that’s going to help him against a smart fighter like Algieri.
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