Manny Pacquiao will defend the WBO welterweight title against one-time kickboxer Chris Algieri on Nov. 22 in Macau, China. (AFP Photo/Jeff Gross)
Manny Pacquiao, boxing’s second-biggest attraction, will take his act on the road again on Nov. 22, when he defends his WBO welterweight title against Chris Algieri at the Cotai Arena in the Venetian in Macau, China.
Pacquiao defeated Brandon Rios in Macau on Nov. 23, 2013, in the first HBO Pay-Per-View bout from outside of the U.S. The Filipino star is coming off an April victory in a rematch over Timothy Bradley.
Algieri earned the bout by scoring an upset of Ruslan Provodnikov in a WBO super lightweight bout on June 14 at the Barclays Center in New York. Landing a fight with Pacquiao is a startling rise for Algieri, who began 2014 as a virtual unknown while fighting on ESPN2 Friday Night FIghts shows.
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Chris Algieri is 20-0 with eight KOs. (Ed Mulholland/HBO)
A former kickboxing champion, Algieri is 20-0 with eight knockouts.
The fight likely won’t do a massive number on pay-per-view, but promoter Bob Arum has repeatedly said he’s not worried about that. The fee the Venetian pays to land Pacquiao will more than cover the shortfall in pay-per-view revenue.
Fights that are held outside of the U.S., particularly in an international venue, tend to have dramatically lower pay-per-view sales or television ratings. The Pacquiao-Rios bout sold only around 450,000 buys, much lower than Pacquiao had been doing. But upon his return to the U.S., he did roughly 750,000 sales with Bradley in April.
Pacquiao, who has won two in a row after suffering back-to-back defeats in 2012 to Bradley and Juan Manuel Marquez, is 56-5-2 with 38 knockouts.
