Spence and Algieri make weight

By Boxing News - 04/15/2016 - Comments

spence10(Photo credit: Ed Diller/DiBella Entertainment) By Dan Ambrose: Errol Spence Jr. (19-0, 16 KOs) and Chris Algieri (21-2, 8 KOs) both made weight on Friday for their IBF welterweight eliminator bout this Saturday night on April 16 on premier Boxing Champions on NBC from the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, New York.

The younger fighter Spence weighed in slightly heavier at 146.4lbs compared to the 145.6lbs the older 31-year-old Algieri weighed in at. For today’s weigh-in.

Algieri looked very, very weight drained, and you have to wonder how much weight he had to take off to get down to the 147lb limit. Algieri was in the 160s for his fight against Amir Khan last May. But with the way Algieri looked terribly water drained on Friday, we could see him rehydrate to near 170 on Saturday night. That’s a lot of weight to put back on within 24 hours, and it could cause Algieri to be sluggish in the ring if the fight goes past the sixth round. When you put that much weight back on in 24 hours, you’re asking for trouble.

This is supposed to be a real test for the 26-year-old Spence, as Algieri has fought the much better competition during his career with mixed results. The theory is that Algieri will have a chance of beating Spence because he’s fought the better opponents in his career. The problem with that theory is it doesn’t mean anything when you’ve fought the better opposition and arguably lost every time. If fighting a ton of talented fighters equated to you being a world beater, then any journeyman/gatekeeper type fighter would be a world champion, because those guys are frequently used by top fighters as practice opponents on their way up or in stay busy fights.

Algieri has fought three good opponents – Manny Pacquiao, Ruslan Provodnikov and Amir Khan – during his career, and he lost two out of those three fights. I had Algieri losing all three fights, because I thought he deserved a defeat in his fight against Provodnikov in 2014. I don’t think Algieri is going to do well at all against Spence tomorrow night, especially if Algieri tries to slug it out with him. If he does that, then I see this fight ending quickly with Spence destroying Algieri.

Algieri could wear down quick in this fight and wind up with nothing in the gas tank in the second half of the contest if he’s still around. Younger fighters like Saul “Canelo” Alvarez can get away with dehydrating down huge amounts of weight and then putting on more than 20 pounds in the 24 hours before the fight, but that’s because he’s so young. Fighters in their 30s are unable to take that kind of weight off and put it on quickly the way Canelo does. I don’t think Canelo will be able to do this when he gets into his 30s.

Spence, 26, plans on taking advantage of Algieri’s deficiencies when he gets him inside the ring on Saturday night. Algieri doesn’t have a lot of punching power, and that could work against him in this fight because Spence DOES have a great deal of power, and he’s going to be using that power from the moment the fight starts until the moment it ends.
It looks like Algieri’s plan for victory is to try and use size to beat Spence. As drained as Algieri looked on Friday, I think he’s going to come into the fight tomorrow night weighing a lot like he did in his fight against Amir Khan. It’s obviously a worthwhile strategy. Being bigger almost led to Algieri beating Khan last year. If Algieri has a big size advantage over Spence tomorrow night, then he’ll have a chance of winning.

Algieri is going to need to fight as hard as he can if he wants to keep from getting blown out in this fight by Spence, because he’s facing a guy with way more power and talent than him.

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Other weights on the card:

Krzysztof Glowacki 199 vs. Steve Cunningham 199.2
Marcus Browne 174.6 vs. Radivoje Kalajdzic 173.6
Mario Barrios 135.6 vs. Edgar Gabejan 132.2
Heather Hardy 123.2 vs. Anna Hultin 123
Earl Newman 177.6 vs. Dustin Craig Echard 177.6
Radzhab Butaev 140.2 vs. TyKeem Sadler 149
Lukasz Maciec 150 vs. Jeremy Ramos 149.6

The undercard has some good fights involved. I’d rather have seen Glowacki fight a highly ranked younger guy like #1 WBO Olesandr Usyk rather than 39-year-old Cunningham, who is ranked #6 by the WBO, but who has seen better days in his career.