(Manny Pacquiao, left, Chris Algieri, right; via @hboboxing on Twitter)
Manny Pacquiao had his way with Chris Algieri Saturday night on HBO Pay-Per-View, pretty much, if scoring six knockdowns means anything. Which it does. Algieri, the least accomplished opponent of Pacquiao’s post-2008 run, won one round on two scorecards and couldn’t stay on his feet enough to do much else.
Pacquiao did have a touch of trouble early connecting on the taller, defensively savvy and defensively focused Algieri. The 2nd round knockdown was ruled correctly, but was partially the result of a slip (and the same slippery corner produced a similar result in the 6th). After that early stretch, following a 5th round where Algieri got on his jab and connected with right hands to the body and head, Pacquiao turned dominant. The 6th round featured a real knockdown, too, in addition to that semi-knockdown. The 9th round knockdown, on a trademark left, was super-legit, and it was surprising Algieri got up. Algieri was wobbly in the 10th, too, going down for nothing, and once he got out of the 10th Pacquiao took his foot off the gas. It was probably still the best performance of Pacquiao’s career since he got knocked out by Juan Manuel Marquez, keeping in mind that everyone else he fought since then was better than Algieri.
One of the highlights of the fight was, actually, the corner of Algieri. Trainer Tim Lane was hilariously out of touch with reality. The notion he had of giving up the first four rounds before doing anything? Insane, even if they thought Pac’s power would diminish thereafter. It meant Algieri had to win basically every other round thereafter.
Following the 7th round, Lane told Algieri, “This is where we trained to be.” Really? Losing at least six of seven rounds with three knockdowns was where you trained to be? Then, in the 9th, while Lane was bragging to HBO’s Max Kellerman that he was about to “let [Algieri] out of the cage” and score a 10th round knockout, Pacquiao dropped Algieri. And even in the 11th he was talking about a knockout of Pacquiao. There’s the kind of talk you give someone when they need confidence, and there’s the kind of talk you give someone when you’re high as fuck on opium. Lane’s pronouncements were more like the latter.
Best you can say for Algieri is that his defense was pretty good and he was tough. It didn’t get him much other than surviving to the final bell.
This fight was kind of pointless, which we knew going in. Naturally talk turned to the idea of Pacquiao facing Floyd Mayweather soon, which Pacquiao said he’d like. Don’t get your hopes up, kids; the best fight in boxing since at least ’08 hasn’t happened for a whole host of reasons, and almost none of them are gone. A more feasible option is for Pacquiao to take on junior welterweight champion Danny Garcia, what with Freddie Roach thinking Pac is more of a 140-pounder than a true welterweight. That would be far, far more interesting fight than Pacquiao-Algieri, and it’s more makable with HBO once again doing business with Golden Boy fighters (although Garcia is also with manager Al Haymon, and his guys haven’t been taking on the best opposition lately).