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Manny Pacquiao set to face Chris Algieri Nov. 22

Despite reports of contract negotiations hitting a snag, the Pacquiao-Algieri fight has now been finalized.

Jeff Gross
Wil Esco is an assistant editor of Bad Left Hook and has been covering boxing for SB Nation since 2014.

I guess Thomas Dulorme has some pouting to do because Pacquiao-Algieri is officially official, reports ESPN's Dan Rafael. Algieri's team and co-promoters, Joe DeGuardia of Star Boxing and Artie Pellulo of Banner Promotions, met on Tuesday to hash out their differences, which mostly amounted to how they were going to divide up Algieri's share of the money amongst themselves.

The fight is scheduled for November 22 at the Cotai Arena in Macau, China, and will be aired on HBO PPV. Algieri will be moving up in weight to challenge Pacquiao for his WBO welterweight title. The last time Pacquiao fought in Macau was this past November, where he boxed circles around an outgunned Brandon Rios. It'll be much more difficult for him to box circles around a pure boxer like Algieri, but he sure has the firepower advantage. Regarding the negotiations to put this fight together Bob Arum stated:

"We have a deal. On my end, it wasn't a hard deal at all. I came up pretty much with what they were looking for and then Joe and Artie had to sit down with Algieri and cut it up fairly amongst themselves."

Algieri's team had this to say about finalizing the negotiations:

"We had a marathon lunch. We started out meeting in the morning, then went and had a long lunch together, came back to the office and finished it up," DeGuardia said. "I called Bob to tell me we have a deal on our end. All the terms have been reached with Top Rank and we're going to paper it up.

"We were able to sit down and go through everything Chris wanted to go over and put everything together. He's gonna beat Pacquiao."

Contract terms for the bout haven't been disclosed but Joe DeGuardia intimated that Algieri will earn a purse of more than $1 million. Even without the specific figure being released it seems clear his bid to get well over the $1.5 million he had been previously offered, and rejected as too low, didn't work out so favorably. But its still a much bigger purse than he's ever earned before, with his previous high being $100,000 for the Provodnikov fight.

Of course now that the fight is all set, Algieri and his team are estatic about the prospect on taking on a superstar like Manny Pacquiao on a world stage.

"He's very happy. He's happy for the opportunity," DeGuardia said. "I'm ecstatic we've been able to give him this. It's a great feeling. You work hard you develop him up the ranks. He fought off TV for a long time, he got on TV and now this. It's really rewarding to see him get this opportunity and a payday that will change his life.

"He's wants the fight and has no problem going up in weight. He wants the welterweight championship. He wants challenges. He loves the idea. He wanted to fight for another championship and he loves that he is fighting Manny Pacquiao for it. He looks as Manny as an elite of the game. He wants to climb another mountain. If he wins this fight, you have the start of another era."

Bob Arum states that Manny Pacquiao is also pleased with the bout:

"Manny is 100 percent for it," Arum said. "I told him I was coming along with it. He said Algieri seems like a nice young man and he saw his fight with Provodnikov. Manny said he thought it would be a good fight and he was OK with fighting Algieri."

'OK' just about sums it up for me. I've mentioned before that I'm not all that excited for this match-up, although there weren't many viable options for Pacquiao at the moment (outside of all the challengers in our comments section). Pacquiao also mentioning that "Algieri seems like a nice young man" doesn't exactly exude confidence that the killer instinct we've all be longing for is really back neither. Some may play up the angle that Pac-Man will be seeking revenge for his friend, Provodnikov, as a reason as to why it will be a great fight, but I don't buy that. I could easily see Pacquiao soundly beating up Algieri through the middle-to-late rounds, and them him taking his foot off the gas and taking it easy for the remainder. We've all seen it before.

Any ol' way, who is excited for this fight? Who'll actually be buying the PPV? Does Chris Algieri really stand a chance in Macau?

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