Chris Algieri Exposed, Criticised For Lack Of Desire To Win Against Manny Pacquiao

There was no knockout victory for Manny Pacquiao against Chris Algieri on Sunday morning (Australian time) at the Cotai Arena, Venetian Resort in Macau. But there were lots of knockdowns— courtesy of a Pacquiao punch and an Algieri slip— and even more lots of running from the erstwhile undefeated American challenger. Pacquiao won via unanimous decision and expectedly dominated the judges scorecards as well, 119-103, 119-103, 120-102.

While the dominant victory is the main storyline of the one-sided bout, the embarrassing loss also put Algieri in an unfavourable position; many boxing pundits, including Pacquiao’s trainer Freddie Roach, has criticised the American for a rather lacklustre

"The master boxer was given a master class by Professor Pacquiao," Roach said via a Yahoo Sports article from Kevin Iole. "I was disappointed by Algieri. All he did was run. He didn't show the heart or the [expletive] he did versus Ruslan Provodnikov.”

Iole observed the same thing as well saying that the American “offered no resistance, appearing from the early stages of the fight as if he were more interested in surviving than in fighting and trying to win.”

For the record, Pacquiao threw 669 punches with 229 hitting the mark for 34% while Algieri threw 469 and with 108 landing for just 23%, according to stats from CompuBox. That’s a work rate of over 55 punches thrown by Pacquiao and just roughly 39 punches thrown by Algieri for each round.

As observed by Iole and other boxing analysts including ESPN’s Dan Rafael plus the fans who noticed it during a break between rounds 9 and 10, Algieri’s trainer Tim Lane was also caught saying to his ward that “We are exactly where we need to be,” despite the fact that everyone in the building and the millions watching around the world knew that the only chance they had at winning the fight was putting down Pacquiao.

Algieri earned a career-high $1.65 million in the biggest fight of his career and basing it on his performance on Sunday night, it appears the the now over-hyped challenger was just content in earning his big-money payday by running away from a real fight.