By Sam: Everyone has a chance to win any particular boxing match, but, if ring experience and IQ are considered, you can’t in any way say that Chris Algieri can beat Manny Pacquiao this Saturday.
You may have a gut feeling that Chris Algieri may win or you may want him to win because he is an underdog, but, if you have enough knowledge in boxing you will know that it is just restricted to that.
Everyone knows that Manny has come down a few notches from his prime, but, that’s understandable because he is 35 soon to be 36 and that’s not your prime unless you are Bernard Hopkins. The thing that is good with Manny though is as his physical limits are reached and reflexes are slowed down in later stages of his career he has become more of a thinking fighter which is in my opinion even harder to defeat now. Lets put it this way, earlier he was like a shark who completely goes for the kill, but, now he is a killer whale who thinks and analyses his environment and then attacks picking his spot.
Algieri is a very fit guy, no one can argue about that. So there is never going to be an issue of stamina in the fight although its just his second 12 round fight. Manny is a seasoned 12 round veteran, as he has had a lot of high intensity fights which have gone the distance. Now that adds wear and tear to your mind and body, but, if you take a step back and think about it, it has made him very experienced.
Manny Pacquiao has fought in 63 fights compared to Chris Algieri’s 20. In those 63 fights Pacquiao has seen all possible scenarios of a boxing match like knocking someone out, getting himself knocked out, lasting the distance, fighting not only taller guys but also bigger ones although some were at catchweights which surely favored the Pacman.
If you want to see Manny Pacquiao’s growth as an all rounded fighter, you will have to consider two stages. One stage will be till Pacquiao-Morales 1 and second stage will be after that. Before the first Morales fight, Pacquiao was a one handed fighter who relied on his left hand to get him out of trouble. He was wild and had little to no defence, and relied heavily on his reflexes for any defence. After the Morales 1 fight something changed. He started to think more. he started to set more traps. As you can see throughout the 2nd and 3rd Morales fight, Pacquiao did not directly close the gap owing to Morales’s reach advantage, he would rather stay out of range and wait for Morales to over commit himself when he pounced on the opportunity and kept hitting Morales where Morales couldn’t hit back.
Chris also has a longer reach than Pacquiao. But, he is not a guy who forces the action most of the times like Morales does. He is more of a calm, waiting fighter. So, I don’t think the game plan will be to wait till Chris over-commit because he seldom does that. It will probably be about countering Chris with Manny’s speed initially. The thing when Manny fights bigger or taller guys is he initially sets the pace right by countering the jabs with hard punches every time its thrown. So, that leaves them thinking ten times before they throw a jab again. I think that is going to be the case in this fight as well. Now, whenever you talk to Chris Algieri about Pacquiao, he says he is taller and has a good jab. So when Pacquiao will take away his jab there will be sense of panic as they will feel, well, all this time we thought we would jab Manny, what now, we can’t do the one thing properly which we trained to do so much. It will be a situation like when you sit in an exam well prepared in a particular chapter, but the question arrived from a totally different chapter.
I think that panic will make Chris to become braver and wild as he will think of what other to do as he has never seen speed at the Manny level ever. Its hard to set up for that kind of speed unless you are Marquez and haven’t fought him so many times. So the wildness from Chris will leave him open. And trust me from all the training of Pacman that I’ve seen from Macau he looks way more explosive then previous fights, besides its the last days of training and he is taking it easy not over exerting himself, imagine how lethal he will be in the ring when he over exerts his power and will. So, when Chris goes wild and leaves himself open he will get hit and hard and he will get dropped or eventually stopped. Yes, Ruslan Provodnikov has more power then Manny. But, you have to consider other factors. Ruslan will hit you with one hard hit and wait to see what happens, Pacquiao is more snappy so while Ruslan connects with one Pacquiao can connect with two or even three hard ones owing to his speed. Besides, when Ruslan has his opponent hurt, he gets too excited and gets reckless, whereas the thinking Manny will go for the kill when he smells blood.
So, my final verdict and prediction is Manny by TKO or KO over Chris Algieri. This is only my opinion. I might be wrong, I have nothing against Algieri. He is good dude. Its just how I see this fight panning out. But to be honest this fight shouldn’t have happened in the first place. Well, still maybe you can allow top guys easier assignments at times when they get older to help them have longevity in a young man’s sport. Say what you think of the fight via comments.
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