WBO welterweight champion Manny Pacquiao (56-5-2, 38 KOs) and Chris Algieri (20-0, 8 KOs) will start their press tour on Monday in the first stop of their 6-city tour in Macao, China. The press tour was put together by Top Rank to help create interest in the Pacquiao vs. Algieri fight on HBO pay-per-view on November 22nd in Macao, China.
There’s a lot of pressure on both fighters to try sell this fight because it’s not as a particularly interesting one in the minds of many boxing fans. The two fighters will need to go over the top with this one if they want it to sell.
Algieri might need to change his mild-mannered persona and take a rougher edge if he wants to make fans believe he’s not just the token lamb getting ready to be slaughtered by Pacquiao. It’s not looking good that they pooled from the light welterweight division to get Algieri instead of picking out a quality welterweight for Pacquiao to fight.
Pacquiao is often very polite during his press conferences, and he doesn’t generally say a whole lot to help drive interest in his fights. This is one occasion where he could really help himself if he switched things up and made some interesting predictions. However, that’s not likely to happen.
We’re probably going to see Pacquiao’s trainer Freddie Roach continuing the trend where he does most of the trash talking. It’s too bad that strength and conditioning coach Alex Ariza is no longer with the team, because he made things interesting, not so much in the press conferences, but more during HBO’s 24/7 episodes involving Pacquiao.
Pacquiao and Algieri will fly out of Macao on the 26th and will travel to Shanghai, China for the second stop of the press tour. They’ll be at the Sheraton Shanghai Pudong Hotel. From there, they’ll fly to San Francisco, California for the third stop on August 29th. Pacquiao and Algieri will be attending the San Francisco Giants’ media day.
This is a very strange way of creating interest in the Pacquiao-Algieri fight with them attending a Giants’ media day. It almost seems like they’re tagging along with the Giants’ event rather than Bob Arum of Top Rank coming up with their own.
The tour will travel from San Francisco to Las Vegas, Nevada on August 30th. From there they’ll take the tour to Los Angeles, California for a meeting at the Dodger Stadium. I guess the idea is for the fighters to be announced to the crowd to try and get fans to purchase the fight on PPV. On September 4th, the tour will travel to New York City at the Liberty Theater.
