By Chris Williams: It’s looking like we could have a catch-weight of 144 pounds for the November 22nd fight between WBO welterweight champion Manny Pacquiao (56-5-2, 38 KO’s) and his lighter opponent Chris Algieri (20-0, 8 KO’s) in their fight at the Venetian Casino & Resort, in Macao, Macao S.A.R., China.
Steve Kim is reporting that a catch-weight could be in play for this fight. In this case, it wouldn’t be a handicap for Pacquiao, but instead for his lighter opponent Algieri, who holds down the WBO light welterweight title.
Algieri is thin fighter and it’s not likely that he’ll be able to bulk up and be a legit welterweight in time to fight Pacquiao on November 22nd. Algieri can put on weight, to be sure, but definitely not 7 pounds of pure muscle and usable muscle in just 4 months. He is after all 30-years-old and not a young puppy still growing. At 30, Algieri has done growing a long time ago, so any weight he would put on in 4 months would likely be fat rather than pure muscle.
Steve Kim said “Artie Pellulo says that a Pacquiao-Algieri fight would be at a catch-weight of 144 pounds.”
It’s a controversial move of Bob Arum of Top Rank to select a light welterweight to fight Pacquiao instead of someone from the welterweight division that has some power and speed to make it an interesting fight. And I’m not even talking about the popularity aspect of Arum picking out a guy who isn’t well known to casual boxing fans, and thinking that the storyline alone will sell the fight and make it successful.
I know Arum is an expert at promoting fights, but I think he’s dead wrong in thinking fans will want to see Pacquiao fight Algieri because he has a Master’s degree and hopes to go to medical school sometime. Arum needed to bounce that idea off of some regular fans before making the decision to select Algieri, because the storyline idea isn’t going to make this fight more appealing to fans. Why should they care about Algieri having a degree or being articulate?
Fans only care about fighters that are recognizable, which Algieri isn’t, and highly talented to the point where they see him having a chance at beating Pacquiao.
Algieri falls short in that area as well. Algieri is basically a guy that went life and death with a very average Ruslan Provodnikov in winning a controversial 12 round split decision last June. This is the same Provodnikov that Mauricio Herrera totally schooled in beating him by a 12 round decision in 2011.
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