Every year there seems to be a boxer that not exactly comes out of nowhere, but comes from not being well known to all of a sudden skyrocketing up the boxing charts. We’ve seen this out of Gennedy Golovkin when he broke out against Grzegorz Proksa, we’ve seen it out of Josesito Lopez with the win against Victor Ortiz, and we’ve seen this from Keith Thurman when he destroyed Jesus Soto Karass. This year that rising player in the game seems to be Chris Algieri. He has gone from fighting Emmanuel Taylor on ESPN2 in February to now 9 months later, getting a shot at the great Manny Pacquiao.
Chris Algieri is former undefeated kickboxer (20-0) that turned into an undefeated boxer, at 20-0 with 8 KOs, coming out of Huntington, NY. He’s 30 yrs old, has a long reach of 72 inches, is a very highly skilled boxer, and in my opinion has a top 5 jab in the sport. He’s only been a professional boxer for 6 years and is signed with Joe DeGuardia’s Star Boxing. He also was undefeated as an amateur kickboxer, so as you can see, he doesn’t seem to lose and doesn’t seem to be willing to find out how losing feels. One must really start to question how good he may be and how high he can fly.
ThaBoxingVoice’s Victor Salazar spoke with Chris Algieri and asked him about how his meteoric rise started. “You know that Drake song, ‘0-100 real quick, real quick?’ That’s my year right now. I was waiting for my breakout year. I thought it was going to be last year. Turns out it’s this year and I’m running with it.” He was then asked about how a Manny Pacquiao shot came to him, Algieri said, “Bob Arum, he predicted me to beat Ruslan, and he said he would like to make the Manny Pacquiao fight after that, and here we are. When Bob speaks, it happens.”
Algieri said a Pacquiao fight wasn’t something he really thought about at the time because he wanted to just concentrate on his task at the time, which was Ruslan Provodnikov, who was a big favorite over Algieri. However, he knew that after that fight that the sky was the limit for him and in his words, “Manny is the sky.” It’s a fight that most people didn’t expect to actually be made. Even Freddie Roach himself told me after the Provodnikov fight that he didn’t think that was enough to get a Pacquiao fight. In Roach’s words, he thought Algieri was good and he liked him, but he needed “more seasoning”.
Freddie also has said that all he has is a good jab and that’s it. Algieri responded to that by saying, “Listen, if all a guy has is a good jab, that’s a problem to tell you the truth. So when he says that, I’m like, ‘Alright, thank you Freddie, I got a good jab’. If 1 of the best boxing coaches in the world says you got a good jab, that’s a good thing. Along with that I got good footwork and I got heart. So that’s a probem.”
Algieri knows that he has been the underdog pretty much this whole year, but says, “I was an underdog against Emmanuel Taylor. I was an underdog against Ruslan Provodnikov. Everyone was saying I didn’t belong in there. Obviously I proved I belonged to be there. People are saying I don’t belong to be in with Manny. You will see on November 22nd, that I belong to be there. I’m gonna go out and be me and if I’m me, to a 100%, I’m gonna win that fight.”
The fight will be in Macau, China, and will be fought at a catchweight of 144 lbs, which goes along with what Roach told me, which was that the fight was not going to happen at 140. What was a bit shocking was that Algieri said he actually wanted to fight at 147 and that it was Pacquiao’s camp that wanted 144, not him. “I wanted the fight to be at 147 because that is the original weight class of the welterweight title. The catchweight was not on my hand. I was willing to go all the way up to 147. I got no problem with that weight class. It’s just less weight for me to cut. I’m going to weigh 144.0 on the dot, like I always do.”
Algieri’s last words on the fight, knowing that this is his big chance, knowing he’ll be in the spotlight, and knowing everyone will be watching him said, “Start watching yesterday. Follow my entire camp. I document everything. There are no secrets in terms of what I do to prepare for fights. We’re marketing this fight. We’re going to build this fight and we’re going to have a Grand Event on November 22nd. If you don’t think I deserve it. Follow. Watch. Tune in and you’ll see why I do.” So on November 22nd, we get to see if Mr. Chris Algieri can shock the world and prove to everyone, that this is his time, enjoy the fight.
