By Chris Williams: 5’6” Manny Pacquiao (56-5-2, 38 KOs) will be giving up a huge 4 inch height and a 6 inch reach advantage to the 5’10” challenger Chris Algieri (20-0, 8 KOs) in their HBO pay-per-view fight on November 22nd in Macao, China.
Pacquiao, however, isn’t concerned at all about Algieri’s superior height and reach. Pacquiao says that he’s been in with taller fighters in the past and beaten them, and he believes he’ll be able to do the same thing with Algieri.
In the past, Pacquiao beat 5’10’ Oscar De La Hoya, 5’11” Antonio Margarito, and a 5’9” Shane Mosley. But the one constant with all three of those taller fighters was that they were all shot fighters. Pacquiao’s management set him up against fighters at the tail end of their careers rather than in the zenith of their careers.
De La Hoya was 34, half-starved from a crazy diet that he’d gone on to drain down from 154 to fight Pacquiao at 147. Margarito was a shell of his former self after having been exposed by Mosley. And Mosley was in his 40s when he fought Pacquiao, and nothing like the same fighter he was when he was at the top of his game.
“I know what I’m going to do in the ring. It’s not my first time fighting a taller guy like him,” Pacquiao explained via Thaboxingvoice.com.
Pacquiao needs to worry about Algieri’s size because this guy isn’t shot like the taller fighters that Pacquiao has beaten in the past, and we’re talking about an older Pacquiao now.
It’s pointless for Pacquiao to bring up things he did in the distant past. He’s not the same fighter that defeated a shot Margarito I 2010, and he’s definitely not the same fighter that beat the shell of De La Hoya in 2008.
I really see the Pacquiao-Algieri fight as a toss-up fight. Pacquiao is old, easy to hit and much shorter than Algieri. It’s going to put Pacquiao at a huge disadvantage in this fight.
The only thing we don’t know about the Pacquiao-Algieri fight is the judging. With the fight being in Macao, we don’t know if Algieri can win the fight by a decision unless he does something really spectacular.
Pacquiao said this when asked if he’ll be able to end his 5 years without a knockout: “We’ll see. Yeah we’ll see in November.”
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