Manny Pacquiao is to return to China for his next fight, taking on Chris Algieri in the gambling enclave of Macau.
The scheduled Nov. 22 fight for the welterweight title held by Pacquiao comes a year after the Filipino headlined the first big fight card in Macau with a win over Brandon Rios.
Promoter Bob Arum said Pacquiao would likely fight at least once a year in Macau for the rest of his career.
Photo: AFP
“It’s almost like fighting at home, so it’s a major advantage for Manny,” Arum said.
“Plus, if he fights in Macau he’s not subject to US income taxes, which are 39.5 percent,” he added.
Arum said the fight will not sell as well on pay-per-view in the US as it would if it was in Las Vegas, but that will be offset by lower taxes on Pacquiao’s purse and a bigger site fee from the Venetian hotel-casino. He said plans are also in place to sell the fight on TV in China, where Pacquiao is becoming better known.
“We hope to make up for any shortfall with the pay-per-view in China,” Arum said.
“The market is huge and we’re going to sell it for like four [US] dollars,” he said.
Pacquiao returns to Macau on a two-fight winning streak that began in September last year with his win over Rios. Before that, he had lost a disputed decision to Timothy Bradley and was knocked out by Juan Manuel Marquez.
Algieri, a former kick boxer from New York, is unbeaten in 20 fights with eight knockouts, and he won a split decision last month over Ruslan Provodnikov in a light welterweight title fight that got him the shot against Pacquiao.
He is little known, even in boxing circles, but Arum said he brings a lot to the promotion.
“He has a lot of things going for him. He’s a college graduate, good looking kid, a good boxer,” Arum said. “There’s a lot of stuff that makes him very saleable.”
Pacquiao’s options for opponents have been limited in recent years.
Floyd Mayweather Jr refuses to fight him and until Oscar de la Hoya regained control of Golden Boy Promotions, his company was not allowing any of its fighters — including England’s Amir Khan, among others — to fight any of Arum’s Top Rank boxers.
The lack of compelling match-ups has hurt pay-per-view numbers, too, with both Pacquiao and Mayweather not faring as well as expected in selling their last fights.
Arum said he believes Algieri would be accepted as a credible opponent, despite his relative lack of knockout power, and that fans in Macau would embrace Pacquiao again.
“Boxing is doing well in Macau. It’s something new for them and we give them a presentation they haven’t seen before,” Arum said. “It’s the same as in Vegas, except it’s on steroids.”
Bayer 04 Leverkusen go into today’s match at TSG 1899 Hoffenheim stung from their first league defeat in 16 months. Leverkusen were beaten 3-2 at home by RB Leipzig before the international break, the first loss since May last year for the reigning league and cup champions. While any defeat, particularly against a likely title rival, would have disappointed coach Xabi Alonso, the way in which it happened would be most concerning. Just as they did in the Supercup against VfB Stuttgart and in the league opener to Borussia Moenchengladbach, Leverkusen scored first, but were pegged back. However, while Leverkusen rallied late to
If all goes well when the biggest marathon field ever gathered in Australia races 42km through the streets of Sydney on Sunday, World Marathon Majors (WMM) will soon add a seventh race to the elite series. The Sydney Marathon is to become the first race since Tokyo in 2013 to join long-established majors in New York, London, Boston, Berlin and Chicago if it passes the WMM assessment criteria for the second straight year. “We’re really excited for Sunday to arrive,” race director Wayne Larden told a news conference in Sydney yesterday. “We’re prepared, we’re ready. All of our plans look good on
The lights dimmed and the crowd hushed as Karoline Kristensen entered for her performance. However, this was no ordinary Dutch theater: The temperature was 80°C and the audience naked apart from a towel. Dressed in a swimsuit and to the tune of emotional music, the 21-year-old Kristensen started her routine, performed inside a large sauna, with a bed of hot rocks in the middle. For a week this month, a group of wellness practitioners, called “sauna masters,” are gathering at a picturesque health resort in the Netherlands to compete in this year’s Aufguss world sauna championships. The practice takes its name from a
When details from a scientific experiment that could have helped clear Russian figure skater Kamila Valieva landed at the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA), the leader of the organization’s reaction was unequivocal: “We have to stop that urgently,” he wrote. No mention of the test ever became public and Valieva’s defense at the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) went on without it. What effect the information could have had on Valieva’s case is unclear, but without it, the skater, then 15 years old, was eventually disqualified from the 2022 Winter Olympics after testing positive for a banned heart medication that would later
RSS