Chris Algieri hits the road so he can hit Manny Pacquiao
On Valentine's Day, Chris Algieri performed amid 943 seats at a theatre in Huntington, N.Y.
Five days before Thanksgiving, Algieri fights in the seventh-largest building in the world.
His opponent is Manny Pacquiao, who has been living in main events for a decade. Pacquiao has had 28 major championship fights. Algieri has fought professionally 20 times.
They meet at the Cotai Arena in the Venetian Macau hotel, with its 2,905 rooms and its 1.2 million square feet of convention space and its 20 restaurants. But the arena seats only 15,000, smaller than Brooklyn's Barclay Center, where Algieri won unanimously over Ruslan Provodnikov and took the WBO junior welterweight belt.
"He was fighting in Huntington all that time and he kept saying he wanted to travel," said Joe DeGuardia, Algieri's promoter. "Then for this fight they put him a press tour that took him 2,700 miles. I told him, 'Now you're traveling.'
But if Algieri somehow beats Pacquiao, his journey will go to mach speed.
He has bachelor's and master's degrees in nutrition and still plans to become a doctor when boxing is over. He was a kickboxer and a personal trainer, and is 30 and single, with cross-gender appeal.
"The thing that stood out, when he started fighting in Huntington, was the type of people he would bring out," DeGuardia said. "It was different. He knew a lot of people, but half the crowd was women. And it was a professional, well-dressed crowd.
"There's no question that if he wins, and I think he will, that he'll become a huge crossover star. He'll be on the talk shows, the magazine covers. He's smart and articulate and educated. You just don't see many boxers like that — and you don't see many boxers who grew up through the community, with this grassroots support, instead of coming up through the casinos and TV. He is a real phenomenon."
Algieri got his bachelor's degree in pre-medical health care management from Stony Brook, on Long Island. In September he returned to conduct the ceremonial coin toss before a football game against William & Mary. He has his master's in clinical nutrition from the New York Institute of Technology. He still was paying off the loans to get those degrees until the victory over Provodnikov.
He and trainer Tim Lane, a former kickboxer, travel with healing bracelets and pendants, and they talk of magnetic fields, but Algieri basically believes in common-sense eating habits. He hopes to become an osteopath, and to teach weekend and full-time athletes how to train and recover in less stressful ways.
But Algieri does not want you to confuse the narrative with the boxer. He said this was the game plan all along, to take his combat-sport career as deep as he could before settling into real life.
Although he has reveled in these heady months of build-up, and although he has delighted in beating Pacquiao in pool, Pop-A-Shot and batting practice during their tour, he thinks he can win.
"I've been watching Manny for 10-15 years now," Algieri said. "I remember how Juan Manuel Marquez made him think. He's the king of stop and start. He used broken rhythm to disrupt him. That's a great strategy for anyone.
"Seeing Manny up close was good. He's a real person in my mind now."
Algieri also saw that he is 5-10 and Paquiao is 5-6 ½. Algieri will have a 5-inch edge in reach.
"That way I can hit him before he hits me," Algieri said. "He has speed, but timing beats speed. People question my punching ability (he has only eight KOs) but Provodnikov didn't walk through my punches, and he was bulletproof. Other people's opinions are really none of my business."
Algieri felt as if he were spinning his wheels professionally when he met DeGuardia. He felt he and Lane were stigmatized by their kickboxing background, too easily written off as kungfu fighters.
DeGuardia had boxed as an amateur while he got his bachelor's degree from Fordham and a law degree from Hofstra. He identified with Algieri, and, providentially, found the Paramount Theatre, an elegant venue just a few blocks from Algieri's home.
"They can put 1,400 in there with standing room, and there's bars, and then a Founder's Room downstairs which is like a private club," DeGuardia said. "It was perfect for Chris. It has developed right along with him."
In between concerts and comedy shows, the Paramount played host to Algieri seven times. In February, ESPN showed up to watch him fight Emmanuel Taylor, whom DeGuardia also promoted, and Algieri rolled to a unanimous decision.
That earned the shot at Provodnikov who, like Pacquiao, is trained by Freddie Roach. Provodnikov opened savagely, knocking Algieri down twice in the first round and disfiguring his eye.
But Algieri had been busted up regularly in kickboxing, did not panic and outboxed the Siberian the rest of the way. That earned Algieri gladiator points.
"If I'd won the fight the way I wanted to, I wouldn't have gotten this fight," Algieri said. "Joe told me it was great the eye turned out that way. I said, well, that's one way to look at it."
Algieri has outgrown the Paramount, but boxing hasn't.
DeGuardia's new star is a light welterweight named Cletus Seldin, who has 11 knockouts in 14 wins, was named after former Yankees third baseman Clete Boyer, and is known as the "Hebrew Hammer."
"I saw his name on a bus the other day," DeGuardia said. "That was exciting. He is building a following, too.".
Some guys can fight themselves off the Island.