Chris Algieri on Newfound Star-Status and The Charge Nov. 22 is a “PPV Ripoff”

Published

11 years ago

August 21, 2014

Happens all the time. Person who wants to be a star, get to that promised land where folks are at your beckon call, where the worries melt away because the pitfalls which snag the common man no longer apply, are nullified because of the status your newfound celebrity now accords.

Ample money, respect afforded to you 24-7, tables are restaurants held for you, and patrons sitting there are rudely and promptly dislodged in order to make room for you.

Person attains stardom…and then, shockingly, finds that some of the pitfalls have melted away, but lo and behold, new ones have mushroomed.

Chris Algieri, the Huntington Heartthrob is there now. That belt around his waist, the WBO junior welterweight title, is a testament to the fact that he is arrived at the promised land for boxers. Oh, and the number of zeros on his next paycheck, the one he will cash for fighting Manny Pacquiao in Macau on Nov. 22, and on pay-per-view, that helps cement the notion that he resides in a new space. But, I asked the Long Islander as he readied his suitcases for the 17 or so hour of air travel to make the Monday press conference in Macau, where he and Pacquiao will be present to help in the hype process, has reaching this plot of promised land been all it has been cracked up to be?

Is it all good, and when inevitable annoyances pop up, are they immediately shoved aside, with an excess of good natured tolerance displayed…or are these newfound annoyances like zits on an adolescent, prone to popping up with disturbing regularity, and immune to immediate minimization?

“It’s both,” said the 30-year-old boxer, who started out as a kickboxer, and turned pro as a pugilist in 2008. He said that he is looking forward to the trek to Macau, and touching down in Taipei, before completing the second leg to the new fightgame mecca, as constructed by Top Rank promotional wizard Bob Arum. Algieri hit Europe and saw the sites, and got his world-view some seasoning, as a late teen, so he’s had the travel bug. “And this is what happens when you’re a ‘star,’ he stated. “It comes with the territory. And I’m prepared for it. It’s what I’ve wanted, and it is what it is.”

Now, it isn’t to say that Algieri (20-0, with 8 knockouts) has found all the shifts in his existence since he took that strap from Ruslan Provodnikov on June 14 at Barclays Center in Brooklyn and on HBO to be nothing but smooth. The cameras, they are now everywhere. HBO has been filming him for weeks for 24/7, he said, and there is media at every single workout. For a guy who describes himself as a “homebody,” this new phase in life is taking some getting used to.

“It’s so constant,” he said. “That’s the most aggravating part. And I can’t go out like I used to, even in my neighborhood. Even running in my neighborhood….There’s no place to hide.”

So far, he said, the HBO cameras haven’t caught him or any of his family or extended crew doing anything untoward, or embarrassing, or the like. “I told them, ‘Be yourself.’ I think there could be a new star, though. My grandmother is funny, and so sharp.” Anne Algieri has seen a bunch of decades fade into her rear view mirror, but her mind is keen. “They interviewed her, put her on the spot, and her answer was so good, good stuff. She talked about watching my fights, and how she knew I was a smart fighter right away. Her favorite fighter was Joe Louis.”

But while grandma is an immense fan, not everyone else is. I told Algieri about the article I just read, which called the Nov. 22 scrap a “Pay Per View Ripoff,” and described the Long Islander as a pillow fisted sort who is most adept at avoiding contact. He chuckled as I relayed this. But, I wondered, after you read a few of these, don’t you feel like lashing out? Does anger build, and don’t you want to shout out that you deserve some respect?

“It hasn’t gotten to that point yet,” he said. “I’m smiling even as you’re reading that. The people that write that, they have no idea who I am. If they write that, they don’t know me.”

The boxer told me that Team Pacquiao were the ones pushing for the bout to be contested at 144 pounds or less, and actually, he’d love for the event to be signed for 147 pounds, a true welterweight contest, because he respects the original division. “I’m a purist,” he told me. “That is the real weight class, for a real title. They wanted it, it’s not on me. I’ve always wanted to be a welterweight champion.” 140, 144, 147, wherever it is contested, he aims to give Pacquiao the same type of problems, he says.

I also asked for an update on the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge. He put a challenge out to Pacman on August 20. Has the Congressman taken the baton, and taken a chilly bath for charity? “Not that I’ve seen,” Algieri said. Hmmm, might there be an opportunity to force Manny’s hand? Wouldn’t it be something, I said, not intending to be a provocateur, or not a malevolent one, anyway, if you filled up a Gatorade bucket with ice and doused Manny in Macau, at the presser on Monday?

“Absolutely not,” said Algieri, chuckling heartily at the thought. “That would aggravate me if someone did that to me! I’d be furious.”

Another hmmm…no one ever gets under Manny’s skin, I thought aloud…wouldn’t it be interesting to see him get rattled and annoyed?

“Nah,” Algieri said, “I expect us to have a humble and refreshing press conference Monday. Although I’m guessing maybe the trainers will have their say.” His guy Tim Lane, he told me, will be able to match Freddie Roach if Dedham Freddie wants to talk trash. “We may have to pull Tim back. He can unload!”

The boxer leaves for Macau tonight. The Macau presser is Monday, and Tuesday there is another one in Shanghai. He flies to LA on Wednesday and does press on the West Coast, whereupon he comes back to NY for a media presser in Manhattan on Thursday, Sept. 4. By that time, maybe the Ice Bucket Challenge will have run its course as a web fad, and, perhaps, a few more people will be convinced that the New Yorker could indeed prove a stiff test for a guy who hasn’t scored a stoppage since 2009, one with almost 36-year-old legs.

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Keith Thurman Returns with a Bang: KOs Brock Jarvis in Sydney

Published

1 hour ago

March 12, 2025

Arne K. Lang

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The combination of age and ring rust made Keith Thurman a tricky proposition against Brock Jarvis, but the 36-year-old Floridian, a former WBA and WBC world welterweight champion, had too much firepower for the overmatched Aussie, knocking out Jarvis in the third round tonight in Sydney and setting up a massive fight with Tim Tszyu.

Thurman’s career has been repeatedly interrupted with injuries. He missed all of 2023 and 2024 and this was only his second fight back since being out-pointed by Manny Pacquiao in 2019. He was slated to fight Tszyu in March of last year in Las Vegas with two 154-pound straps on the line, but pulled out with a biceps injury and was replaced by Sebastian Fundora who saddled the snakebit Tszyu with his first defeat.

Against Brock Jarvis, Thurman started slowly. The TV commentating team, which included Tszyu and Shawn Porter, had the busier Jarvis winning the first two rounds. But the savvy Thurman was simply “processing data” and found his grove in the third frame, smashing Jarvis to the canvas with a combination climaxed by a wicked uppercut. Jarvis staggered to his feet but was a cooked goose and the referee waived it off immediately when Jarvis hit the deck again after absorbing a harsh left hook. The official time was 2:19 of round three.

It was the second bad loss for Jarvis (22-2), a noted knockout puncher who had previously been stopped in the opening round by countryman Liam Paro. He hails from the Sydney suburb of Merrickville which also spawned Hall of Famer Jeff Fenech, Jarvis’s former trainer.

Thurman advanced to 37-1 with his twenty-third win inside the distance. According to Tszyu’s promoter George Rose, the match between Thurman and Tszyu will finally come to fruition on July 6, likely at the Gold Coast Convention Center in Broadbeach. That’s predicated on the assumption that Tszyu wins his next fight without complications which comes on April 6 against Minnesota’s 19-1 Joey Spencer at Newcastle, Australia.

Other Bouts of Note

Melbourne Middleweight Michael Zerafa, who also covets a match with Tim Tszyu, improved to 33-5 (21 KOs) with a seventh-round stoppage of Germany’s obscure Besir Ay (19-2) who was on the deck twice before the referee waived it off. This was the second fight back for Zerafa after getting pulverized by Erislandy Lara who stopped him in the second round in March of last year. Ay, 35, is recognized as the middleweight champion of Germany.

In a middleweight match slated for 10, Tim Tszyu’s longtime sparring partner Cesar Mateo bombed out Sergei Vorobev in the fifth round, ending the match with a spectacular one-punch KO. The 26-year-old Mateo (18-0-1, 11 KOs) is a native is a native of Tijuana. Vorobev (20-3-2) is a 30-year-old Sydneysider born in Russia.

Thurman vs. Jarvis, a pay-per-view event in Australia, aired in the U.S. on a tape-delay on the PBC youtube channel.

Photo credit: Grant Trouville / No Limit Boxing

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Friday Boxing Recaps: Observations on Conlan, Eubank, Bahdi, and David Jimenez

Published

4 days ago

March 8, 2025

Arne K. Lang

Friday Boxing Recaps: Observations on Conlan, Eubank, Bahdi, and David Jimenez

March 7 was an unusually heavy Friday for professional boxing. The show that warranted the most ink was the all-female card in London, a tour-de-force for the super-talented Lauren Price, but there were important fights on other continents.

Brighton

Michael Conlan, who sat out all of 2024 on the heels of being stopped in three of his previous five, returned to the ring in the British seaside resort city of Brighton in a shake-off-the-rust, 8-rounder against Asad Asif Khan, a 31-year-old Indian from Calcutta making his first appearance in a British ring.

Conlan, a 2016 Olympic silver medalist who famously signed with Top Rank coming out of the amateur ranks, is now 33 years old. Against Khan, he was far from impressive, but did enough to win by a 78-74 score and lock in a match with Spain’s Cristobal Lorente, the European featherweight champion.

Conlan, who improved to 19-3 (9), absorbed a lot of punishment in those three matches that he lost. With his deep amateur background, Michael has a lot of mileage on him and he would have been smart to call it quits after his embarrassingly one-sided defeat to Luis Alberto Lopez. His frayed reflexes speak to something more than ring rust. Heading in, Khan brought a 19-5-1 record but had scored only five wins inside the distance.

Conlan vs Khan was the co-feature. In the main event, Brighton welterweight Harlem Eubank, the cousin of Chris Eubank Jr, improved to 21-0 (9 KOs) with a dominant performance over Conlan’s Belfast homie Tyrone McKenna. Eubank was credited with three knockdowns, all the result of body punches, before referee John Latham had seen enough and pulled the plug at the 2:09 mark of round 10. It was the fourth loss in his last six outings for the 35-year-old McKenna (24-6-1).

Harlem Eubank wants to fight Conor Benn next and says he is willing to wait until after his cousin “wipes Benn out.” Chris Eubank Jr vs Benn is slated for April 26 at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium. The North London facility, which has a retractable roof, is the third-largest soccer stadium in England.

Toronto

Local fan favorite Lucas Bahdi and his stablemate Sara Bailey were the headliners on last night’s card at the Great Canadian Casino Resort in Toronto. The event marked the first incursion of Jake Paul’s MVP Promotions into Canada.

Bahdi, who is from Niagara Falls but trains in Toronto, burst out of obscurity in July of last year in Tampa, Florida, with a spectacular one-punch knockout of heavily-hyped Ashton “H2O” Sylva. His next fight, on the undercard of Jake Paul’s match with Mike Tyson, was less “noisy” and the same could be said of his homecoming fight with Ryan James Racaza, an undefeated (15-0) but obscure southpaw from the Philippines who was making his North American debut.

Bahdi vs Racaza was a technical fight that didn’t warm up until Bahdi produced a knockdown in round seven with a sweeping left hook, a glancing blow that appeared to land behind Racaza’s ear. The Filipino was up in a jiff, looking at the referee as if to say, “this dude just hit me with a rabbit punch.”

The judges had it 99-90, 97-92, and 96-93 for the victorious Bahdi (19-0) who was the subject of a recent profile on these pages.

Sara Bailey, a decorated amateur who competed around the world under her maiden name Sara Haghighat Joo and now holds the WBA light flyweight title, successfully defended that trinket with a lopsided decision over Cristina Navarro (6-3), a 35-year-old Spaniard who “earned” this assignment by winning a 6-round decision over an opponent with a 1-4-3 record. The judges scored the monotonous fight 99-91 across the board for Bailey who improved to 6-0 and then returned to the ring to assist her husband in Lucas Bahdi’s corner.

Also

Twenty-two-year-old super bantamweight Angel Barrientes, a Las Vegas-based Hawaii native, delivered the best performance of the night with a one-sided beatdown of Alexander Castellano whose corner mercifully stopped the contest after the seventh round as the ring doctor stood in a neutral corner chatting with the referee.

The gritty Castellano, who hails from Tonawanda, New York, brought an 11-1-2 record and hadn’t previously been stopped. A glutton for punishment, he appeared to suffer a broken orbital bone. Barrientes improved to 13-1 (8 KOs).

The show was marred by an excessive amount of fluffy gobbledygook by the TV talking heads which slowed down the action and made the promotion almost unwatchable.

Cartago, Costa Rica

Fighting in his hometown, super flyweight David Jimenez scored a lopsided 12-round decision over Nicaragua’s Keyvin Lara. The judges had it 120-108, 119-109, and 116-112.

Jimenez, now 17-1, came to the fore in July of 2022 when he upset Ricardo Sandoval in Los Angeles, winning a well-earned majority decision over a 20/1 favorite riding a 16-fight winning streak. That boosted him into a title fight with the formidable Artem Dalakian who saddled him with his lone defeat.

Jimenez’s victory over Lara was his fifth since that setback. It sets up the Costa Rican for another title fight, this time against Argentina’s Fernando Martinez who acquired the WBA 115-pound title in July with an upset of Kazuto Ioka in Japan. Lara, who unsuccessfully challenged Ioka for a belt in 2016, falls to 32-7-1.

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Price Conquers Jonas on an All-Female Card at Royal Albert Hall

Published

5 days ago

March 7, 2025

Arne K. Lang

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Ben Shalom’s BOXXER Promotions was at London’s historic Royal Albert Hall tonight with an all-female card topped by a welterweight unification fight between WBC/IBF belt-holder Natasha Jonas and WBA champion Lauren Price.

Liverpool’s Jonas, who turns 41 in June, has had a sterling career, but Father Time has caught up with her. The 30-year-old Price, an Olympic gold medalist, had faster hands, faster feet, and hit harder. The classy Jonas (16-3-1) acknowledged as much in her post-fight interview: “She beat me to the punch every time.”

The scores were 100-90, 98-92, and 98-93.

In advancing her record to 9-0 (2), Price built a strong case that she is the best fighter to come down the pike from Wales since Joe Calzaghe. As for her next bout, she hopes to fight the winner of the March 29 rematch in Las Vegas between Mikaela Mayer and Sandy Ryan. That match, with all of the meaningful welterweight hardware at stake, would be a hot ticket item if potted in Cardiff.

Semi-wind-up

Caroline Dubois staved off a late rally to successfully defend her WBC lightweight title with a majority decision over South Korea’s spunky Bo Mi Re Shin. The judges had it 98-92, 98-93, and 95-95. Although the 95-95 tally by the Korean judge was quite a stretch, Shin performed far better than the odds – Dubois was a consensus 35/1 favorite — portended.

Dubois, a 24-year-old Londoner trained by Shane McGuigan, is the sister of IBF heavyweight title-holder Daniel Dubois. Reportedly 36-3 as an amateur, she advanced her pro record to 11-0-1 (5). Heading in, Shin (18-3-3) had won nine of her previous 10 with the lone setback coming via split decision in a robust fight with Belgium’s Delfine Persoon in Belgium.

Other Bouts of Note

Kariss Artingstall returned to the ring after a 14-month absence and scored a unanimous decision over former amateur rival Raven Chapman. The scores were 98-91, 97-92, 96-93.

The prize for Artingstall, who happens to be Lauren Price’s partner, was the inaugural British female featherweight title and a potential rematch with Skye Nicolson who would relish the chance to avenge her last defeat, a loss by split decision to Attingstall in the quarterfinals of the Tokyo Olympics. Nicolson, who was part of tonight’s broadcast team, defends her title later this month in Sydney against Florida’s Tiara Brown.

It was the first 10-rounder for Artingstall (7-0). Chapman (9-2) had an uphill battle after Artingstall decked her in the second round with a straight left hand.

In a mild upset, Jasmina Zopotoczna, a UK-based Pole, won a split decision over Chloe Watson, adding Watson’s European flyweight title to her own regional trinket. One of the judges favored Watson 97-93, but each of his colleagues had it 96-95 for the Pole. Although there was no great furor, the verdict was unpopular.

Zapotoczna, who fought off her back foot, improved to 9-1. It was the first pro loss for Watson who is trained by Ricky Hatton.

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