Pacquiao Still Brings the Glitz, Glamor but Needs Tougher Tests Than Algieri

Saturday night came and went with one crystal clear conclusion to be drawn.

When it comes to promoting a spar-session-quality boxing match into a pay-per-view event that attracts interest on a truly global scale, nobody on Earth does it any better than Bob Arum.

The Top Rank consigliere took his twice-yearly Manny Pacquiao Show back to Macau, China and presumably managed to draw in at least a few hundred thousand pay-per-view onlookers—at $59.95 for a standard signal and $69.95 for high-definition—for his man’s monotonous six-knockdown pursuit of an opponent who had little to offer beyond a college-educated backstory and a dentist-quality smile.

So while the 36 minutes of intermittent action with prohibitive-for-a-reason underdog Chris Algieri raised the near 20-year pro’s career record to 57-5-2, it did precious little else to reveal whether he actually still has the stuff to handle the truly elite fighters in whichever weight class he lands.

Of course, Pacquiao is not entirely to blame for what was in front of him in Asia.

Algieri only got the fight on the strength of a split-decision win over Ruslan Provodnikov in June that could best be labeled as “odd” (one judge scored nine rounds against him, while the other two scored eight rounds each for him), and because previous four-time Pacquiao foil Juan Manuel Marquez chose not to go for the fiscal terms that Arum and Co. had been suggesting in the summer.

Both Provodnikov and Marquez, in hindsight, would have provided better fodder for a fighter whose Hall of Fame ticket is certainly punched but who’s still proving to stubborn critics that he still has a sizable portion of the skills he displayed across a dizzying, career-defining four-fight stretch in 2008-09.

A fifth go-round with Marquez would have added another layer to this generation’s best old-school rivalry, while Provodnikov would have surely provided more titillation—if not ultimately better results—for as long as either one of them remained vertical and/or coherent.

Meanwhile, because he had just eight KOs in 20 pre-Manny fights—none against anyone near world class—Algieri was left to concoct a strategy that involved the challenger voluntarily ceding the first four rounds while hoping to bedevil and punish the Filipino in the late going. He planned to do this with the same shots that hadn’t deterred the likes of Mike Arnaoutis, Jose Alejo and Raul Tovar from hearing the final bell.    

To suggest it was a dubious approach at the opening bell was prescient.

By the time Algieri hit the deck for the sixth time in Round 10, it was something far more.

Either way, if your objective for the night was to assess if Pacquiao could still get in there at age 35 and handle a stylist like Floyd Mayweather Jr., a hybrid like Marquez or even a slugger like Danny Garcia, the fight served no more purpose than seeing him hit Freddie Roach’s padded hands in the locker room.

Pacquiao doesn’t need those fights to guarantee a bronze bust in Canastota, New York, by any stretch. But if Top Rank wants to continue to pass him off as a pound-for-pound kingpin—not just a globe-trotting seat-filler—those are the opponents he needs to face in the place of an over-his-head wannabe from Long Island or a still-unproven prospect like Jessie Vargas, whose trainer (Roy Jones Jr.) is three times the attraction.

Though he stood four inches taller at 5’10” and weighed six more pounds (according to HBO’s unofficial fight-night scale), Algieri had neither the power to test Pacquiao’s chin nor the acumen to make a would-be technical boxing approach successful.

Instead, those who stayed awake to the final bell—which arrived after 1 a.m. on the East Coast—were treated to a slightly more violent but far less compelling or relevant version of the Canelo Alvarez-Erislandy Lara junior middleweight track meet that was passed off as a pay-per-view by HBO’s rivals at Showtime in mid-July.

And when he finally sat still enough to answer questions from Max Kellerman after the one-sided decision was announced, Algieri’s insight was little more than the same ineffectual round and round.

“Manny is the best in the world at being Manny Pacquiao. He's perfected fighting like Manny Pacquiao,” he said. “It's not so much the power. He has a very, very distinct style that works for him. He's good at being him, and Manny Pacquiao is a hell of a fighter.”

Thanks a bunch for that, Chris.

But next time, maybe we’ll just skip right to test pattern.