As a travel companion, the boxer Manny Pacquiao is very polite, probably not the type to invade another’s air space behind him by reclining his seat too much on a plane.
That was Chris Algieri’s assessment of Pacquiao as a fellow traveler on Thursday (minus the reclining seat bit) after the two trekked 27,273 miles over two countries during an extraordinary press tour to promote their Nov. 22 welterweight title fight in Macau, China on HBO pay-per-view.
The duo marched through six cities in 12 days together, often sharing the same green rooms for interviews, restaurants and private jets and generally occupying the other’s space, starting with a trip to the Venetian Macao on Aug. 25.
“I’ve really never seen anything like this in terms of how close they were,” said veteran PR man Fred Sternburg, who accompanied the fighters on the press tour.
Both camps shared the same private jet from Macao to Shanghai to Taipei, and from San Francisco to Las Vegas and then to Los Angeles, said Algieri of Huntington, LI.
The two boxers did interviews together, shot hoops side-by-side, bowled and competed in billiards in staged events, a situation that Algeiri, who has a Master’s degree in nutrition, described as “little heated competition.”
“They interacted very well with each other, like two quarterbacks in the NFL,” said Bob Arum, who’s promoting the fight. “They’re going to compete hard against each other.”
If it was anyone else, say the highly disruptive Bernard Hopkins for example, the results could have been disastrous.
But with the professional and reserved Pacquiao (56-5-2, 38 knockouts) and the friendly and absorbed Algieri as the protagonists, the excursion went about as smooth as the G5 Jet that took the parties from Las Vegas to Los Angeles.
For both, it was a business trip, a very long, closely shared business trip.
“We were traveling in the same vicinity for most of the time,” Algieri said. “We weren’t like sharing seats or anything but we were in pretty close proximity. It’s definitely different.”
On early Thursday morning, the two finally landed in New York for the final leg of the tour. Later that day, Algieri was in an upstairs room of the Liberty Theater in Times Square conducting interviews when Pacquiao arrived.
“There he is, we were just talking about you,” Algieri yelled over with a smile. Joe Scarnici/Getty Images Other than some initial tension, Manny Pacquiao and Chris Algieri (r.) get along fine during their press tour.
Pacquiao, 35, grinned but didn’t say anything.
Despite the time together, Algieri said there were few moments when the two conversed.
“Very little,” he said. “We’ve been in the same area but very little interaction between ourselves. I’d rather not know too much about my opponent in terms of personal life or him as a person. It seems like Manny is a great guy but I don’t need to focus on Manny being a great guy.”
And the way they related to the other during the trip revealed as much about their personal styles and attitudes as anything: They mostly kept to themselves, focused on promoting their individual brands instead of using the opportunity to gain a mental edge.
“We are promoting our upcoming fight,” Pacquiao said. “And just doing our job and we showed our professionalism. For me, all my opponents, I treat them as friends outside the ring but inside the ring we have a job to do.”
Algieri (20-0, eight knockouts) echoed those comments.
“We don’t worry too much about each other,” Algieri said. “I’m not worried about what Manny Pacquiao does.”
Still, when the press tour kicked off, Algieri admitted there was some initial tension between the two camps mostly bred from unfamiliarity.
Things got edgy when they trekked to Shanghai for another media event and were holed up in a small room in the airport, unable to get through customs.
“We got detained a little bit and everyone was tired and camps got a little too close,” Algieri said. “They were trying to figure out how they were going to get us through but the tension was in the air because we didn’t really know each other.”
That soon dissipated when both sides realized they were dealing with professionals.
“I think everyone was kind of defensive just in case someone got nasty,” Algieri said. “But after a while everyone kind of realized it wasn’t going to be that kind of tour and everyone relaxed.”
