November 23, 2014 – If Chris Algieri had been able to upset Manny Pacquiao in their Macao bout for Pacquiao?s WBO welterweight title last night, he would have been a shoo-in for Fighter of the Year honors. Algieri?s backstory is amazing in its own right ? he?s a one-time kickboxer with two university degrees and aspirations for a career in medicine who came off the floor to rip the WBO junior-welterweight belt out of the hands of certified bad-ass Ruslan Provodnikov earlier this year. On the strength of that gutsy triumph, Algieri was a live underdog against Pacquiao, and displayed a not-so-quiet confidence as he went into the fight with an undefeated record of 20-0 (8 KOs).
Alas for Algieri, Pacquiao turned out to be a bridge too far to cross; a mountain too high to climb. He learned the hard way that Pacquiao is not Provodnikov. Provodnikov is a one-dimensional slugger, something like Marcos Maidana (And a fight between those two would be something to see). Pacquiao is a complete fighter who has been one of the best pound-for-pound pugilists on the planet for most of this young century. That difference became crystal-clear as Pacquiao floored Algieri six times en route to an easy unanimous-decision victory.
After Provodnikov decked Algieri twice in the first round of their junior-welterweight title tilt, Algieri dug in and fought back well enough to earn the decision. After Algieri hit the deck in the second stanza from what looked more like a slip than a true knockdown, he didn?t fight to win. He struggled to survive. Pacquiao stalked; Algieri fled. That was all Chris could do, for there was no way he could mount the savvy, defensive offense that had served him so well against the powerful Provodnikov.
Pacquiao?s trainer, Freddie Roach, questioned Algieri?s heart after the fight. That criticism is unfair. Besides that second-round slip/knockdown, Algieri was on the canvas twice in the sixth and ninth rounds and once in the 10th. After any of those floorings, Algieri could have simply stayed down and collected his paycheck, which was the biggest of his career. But he chose not to take the easy way out. If he wanted to prove to himself that he could survive 12 rounds with one of the most ferocious fighters in the business, he accomplished that mission, even though he didn?t please the crowd. And Algieri still holds his junior-welterweight title, which a horde of other 140-pounders are eager to try to wrest from him.
In the immediate aftermath of his latest victory, Manny called out Floyd Mayweather Jr. A year ago, prospects for a Pacquiao-Mayweather dream fight to occur while both men were reasonably close to their primes seemed to be dead as a doornail. Now, with each of them boasting a pair of victories in 2014 and their promoters willing to negotiate, Pacquiao-Mayweather is suddenly relevant again.
As Captain Jean-Luc Picard used to say in Star Trek: The Next Generation ? ?Make it so.?
