Pacquiao fight vs Algieri ‘boring, a mismatch’
Political adviser Pastor “Boy” Saycon and Purefoods diehard Farley Aguila, who both flew to Macau this weekend for “Clash in Cotai II” featuring eight-division world champion Manny Pacquiao against Chris Algieri, went home a bit disappointed, just like many others, I suppose, who spent a huge sum of money expecting to witness a bruising fight between two warriors.
“It was boring. It was a mismatch,” said Farley, who was still in Macau with his friends three days after the fight.
“Did Algieri not have an inkling who he was up against before he climbed the Cotai Arena ring? He bragged about knocking out the Pacman in a prefight interview, but all he did was run away from him and when they would come face to face, he’d close his eyes tight like a little boy waiting for his momma to spank him.”
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“Matches like the one we just witnessed are unfair to Pacquiao,” said Saycon, who foresees the Saranggani congressman hanging up his gloves in another two years. “Manny deserves to exit with a bang. His promoter Bob Arum should have good fights lined up for him in the next two years.”
A match with Floyd Mayweather Jr. would be perfect, according to Saycon, if the undefeated world champ finally face up to the challenge.
Top Rank’s Arum is optimistic that the long-awaited “Fight of the Century” will push through in the middle of next year.
“This fight has to happen. The fans deserve this fight. Every place we go, the fans ask when it will be staged. I think we can do it some time in the first six months of next year,” Arum said during the postfight press conference at The Venetian’s Macao’s media center.
For Pacquiao trainer Freddie Roach, however, Mayweather is farthest from his mind.
When asked who he thinks should be Manny’s next opponent, he mentioned the name of Danny Garcia.
“That’s my opinion,” he said.
And what about Mayweather? A scribe asked if Roach thinks a Pacquiao-Mayweather faceoff will finally happen soon.
“It will never happen,” was Roach’s curt answer.
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HOOPVINE: Manny Pacquiao met his doppelganger in Macau last week. The Pacquiao dead-ringer was the Thai boxer who fought Zou Shiming in the undercard immediately before his match with Algieri… Pacquiao’s look-alike lost to Zou but practically went unscathed unlike the Chinese fighter, who was badly battered, his eyes swollen closed… While Aguila, Saycon and others may have felt shortchanged with the mediocre, one-sided Clash in Cotai II, I felt very thankful that I experienced the grandeur of a Pacquiao fight… It was my first time to cover a Pacquiao fight live.
