By Mitch Abramson
It’s never easy to trudge long distances with a travel companion.
Inevitably, at some point on the trip, one person ends up getting on the other’s nerves.
It just happens.
So imagine what it must have felt like for Manny Pacquiao and Chris Algieri, who traveled 27,273 miles over two countries during an unprecedented press tour together, all in the name of beating the drums and promoting their Nov. 22 welterweight title fight in Macau, China on HBO pay-per-view.
The two didn’t just partake in the tour but did so in close proximity, marching through six cities in 12 days, often sharing the same green rooms for interviews, restaurants and private jets, beginning with a trip to the Venetian Macao on Aug. 25, where the fighters got a chance to test their patience for the first time with each other.
“I’ve really never seen anything like this,” said veteran PR man Fred Sternburg, who accompanied the fighters on the tour. “They spent a lot of time close together - real close.”
But it wasn’t just them. Both camps, which included an entourage of trainers and promoters and handlers for each fighter, shared the same private jet on trips from Macao to Shanghai to Taipei, and from San Francisco to Las Vegas and then to Los Angeles, said Algieri, who is from Huntington, LI.
“I had wondered how it worked,” Algieri said of a press tour designed in part to expose the masses to the extremely telegenic and articulate but generally unknown Algieri. He may be popular in his home state but not anywhere else, having fought on HBO only once, last June when he upset Ruslan Provodnikov, rising from a pair of knockdowns in the first round to win a close decision.
“We were traveling in the same vicinity for most of the time,” Algieri said. “We weren’t like sharing seats or anything but we were in pretty close proximity. It’s definitely different.”
They did interviews together, during which they barely acknowledged the other’s presence, shot hoops side-by-side, bowled and competed in pool in staged events (that were all won by Algieri), a situation that Algeiri, who has a Master’s degree in clinical nutrition, described as a “little heated competition.”
“They’re both fighting so of course you have to have them everywhere together,” said Bob Arum, who promotes Pacquiao. “But they interacted very well with each other, like two quarterbacks in the NFL. They’re going to compete hard against each other.”
If it was anyone else, say the highly disruptive Bernard Hopkins for example, the results of the tour could have been disastrous.
But with the professional and reserved Pacquiao (56-5-2, 38 knockouts) and the amiable and absorbed Algieri as the central characters, the trip went swimmingly, nearly as smooth as the G5 Jet that took the parties from Las Vegas to Los Angeles.
For both, it was a business trip, a very long, closely shared business trip.
The organizers drew the line at having the fighters and their camps travel in the same cars to avoid any awkward situations.
But the way they acted toward the other during the trip exposed much about their personal charms and attitudes: They pretty much kept to themselves on the trip, fixated on promoting themselves instead of using the time in close quarters to gain any kind of mental age.
“We are promoting our upcoming fight,” Pacquiao said. “And just doing our job and we showed our professionalism. For me, all my opponents, I treat them as friends outside the ring but inside the ring we have a job to do.”
Algieri (20-0, eight knockouts) echoed those comments.
“We don’t worry too much about each other,” Algieri said. “I’m not worried about what Manny Pacquiao does.”
On early Thursday morning, the two finally landed in New York for the final leg of the tour. Later, Algieri was in an upstairs room of the Liberty Theater in Times Square doing interviews when Pacquiao arrived.
“There he is, we were just talking about you,” Algieri yelled over with a smile.
Pacquiao, 35, grinned but didn’t say anything. He seemed lost in his smartphone, his eyes glued to it.
Despite the time together, Algieri said there were few moments when the two actually talked. As a result, a mutual respect may have developed but it would be a stretch to say the two became fast friends.
“Very little,” Algieri said of the times they spoke to one another. “We’ve been in the same area but very little interaction between ourselves. I’d rather not know too much about my opponent in terms of personal life or him as a person. It seems like Manny is a great guy but I don’t need to focus on Manny being a great guy.”
Algieri did say the time around Pacquiao helped demystify Pacquiao’s legend after watching him as a fan for so long in high school.
“He’s got two feet, he’s got a head,” Algieri said. “I think that’s helped quite a bit in terms of helping me grasp everything.”
When the press tour kicked off, Algieri said there was some initial tension between the two camps mostly produced from the newness of the situation.
They didn’t know each other, would be matching wits with each other on Nov. 22 and now would be forced to spend ample amounts of time in each other’s company, often in cramped space.
Things got edgy when they trekked to Shanghai for another media event and were held up in customs at the airport in a small room in the first leg of the trip.
“We got detained a little bit and everyone was tired and camps got a little too close,” Algieri said. “They were trying to figure out how they were going to get us through but the tension was in the air because we didn’t really know each other.”
That soon went away, however, when both sides realized they were dealing with pros.
“I think everyone was kind of defensive just in case someone got nasty,” Algieri said. “But after a while everyone kind of realized it wasn’t going to be that kind of tour and everyone relaxed.”
Though the fighters didn’t exactly bond, the two camps have become friendly. Algieri gave Pacquiao’s trainer Freddie Roach, who suffers from Parkinson’s disease, a stone necklace on Wednesday during a press conference in Los Angeles that radiates positive vibes and is meant to help improve his health, Algieri said.
“I know he’s going through some health issues and as the tour went I could see how he was,” Algieri said. “I gave him a stone that in essence will hopefully help him with his health issues.”
And Roach even acted as a tour guide for Algieri and trainer Tim Lane when they were in Macau, showing them places to eat since Roach had been there previously when Pacquiao fought Brandon Rios, Lane said.
“He’s just a humble man, dude,” Lane said of Roach. “I definitely appreciated what he did when we were over there. He definitely made us feel comfortable.”
Mitch Abramson covers boxing for the New York Daily News and BoxingScene.com.