Manny Pacquiao and Chris Algieri's Latest Comments Before Weigh-in Results

Even though most boxing fans won't start giving their undivided attention to the showdown between Manny Pacquiao and Chris Algieri until the weigh-in on Friday, the two stars have been making the rounds to promote this fight. 

It does come with the territory, though, it's also more necessary than a typical Pacquiao fight. He's been struggling to get pay-per-view buy rates like he used to.

Pac-Man's promoter Bob Arum told Dan Rafael of ESPN.com the buy rate for the second fight with Timothy Bradley, which came in between 750,000-800,000, was "a disappointment." In the same article, it says Pacquiao's fight with Brandon Rios only drew around 475,000 buys. 

Now, Pacquiao is stepping into the ring with an even more obscure opponent. Algieri has been climbing the boxing ranks recently, but his biggest match coming into this fight was against Ruslan Provodnikov. He's a 30-year-old former kickboxer who has been a professional boxer since 2008. 

That's a hard sell to hardcore fans, let alone casual boxing enthusiasts, so being able to talk up the match is crucial to getting eyeballs on the fight. To help you get a sense of where the two fighters are at right now, here's the best comments from each leading up to the weigh-in. 

The Fight That Almost Wasn't

It turns out that Algieri almost made a choice that would have prevented him from fighting Pacquiao, or anyone else, in a boxing ring.

Algieri told Tom Pedulla of The New York Times that a 2013 bout involving Mike Perez and Magomed Abdusalamov nearly sent him into retirement due to injuries sustained by Abdusalamov, which included a blood clot in his brain and being placed in a medically induced coma:

“That struck home with me that this is a dangerous sport,” he said. “This man may not wake up.”

In the same piece, Algieri said that he didn't like the direction his boxing career was taking and wanted to move forward in other avenues:

“I was making what I felt were lateral moves,” Algieri said. “I wasn’t making any money to speak of. I was training like a champion, but I wasn’t getting the recognition or getting paid like one. It was making less and less sense for me to stick around.”

While there's still time to figure out if Algieri's patience will pay off in the boxing ring, by pulling off a huge upset against Pacquiao, it has undoubtedly helped his financial bottom line.

Rafael of ESPN.com reported when the fight was first announced that Algieri will earn in excess of $1 million, which is "more than 10 times his previous biggest purse, which was $100,000 for his upset split decision win against Ruslan Provodnikov..."

More than anything, being an athlete is all about having good timing. Algieri went from being on the brink of retirement and unhappy with the money he was making to headlining a show in Macau, China with one of the biggest stars in boxing. 

Manny Pacquiao Back In Top Form

Chris Hyde/Getty Images

One criticism that has been levied on Pacquiao recently, even in fights he won, was the way he seemed to be taking a methodical approach to success instead of being the aggressor. Boxing is a lot like college football, when winning on its own isn't good enough because everyone wants to see style points. 

As a response to the criticism, Pacquiao is telling anyone who will listen that he's going to end this fight before it gets to the judges. Kevin Iole of Yahoo Sports provided a snippet of what Pac-Man said at the pre-fight press conference on Wednesday:

Pacquiao's confidence is running deeper than that this time around. According to his trainer, Freddie Roach, per Greg Logan of Newsday, Pacman has been saying he will end this fight before it gets started:

"Manny told me, 'One round,' " Roach said. "He's never done that. He won't repeat it, but that's what he said: 'One round.' "

That's an ambitious claim for a fighter who hasn't scored a knockout of any kind since November 2009 against Miguel Cotto. It would be a welcome sight to see, especially since Algieri seems like the perfect opponent to end the four-year streak. 

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