By Edward Chaykovsky
Hall of Fame trainer Freddie Roach is 0-1 against WBO junior welterweight champion Chris Algieri (20-0). On November 22nd, Roach will get a chance to even things up when Algieri moves up in weight to challenge Manny Pacquiao for the WBO welterweight title at the Venetian in Macau, China.
Roach was working the corner of Ruslan Provodnikov back in June, when the "Siberian Rocky" nearly knocked Algieri's head off in the opening round. Algieri went down twice, suffered a horrific injury to his eye and the end appeared to be near. But Algieri survived and then outboxed Provodnikov to win a twelve round split decision and walked away with the WBO 140-pound title.
"It surprised me because I actually think Ruslan won that fight. [Algieri] got beat up a little bit," said Roach.
Against Pacquiao, Roach is going to focus on overcoming Algieri's reach advantage and his good jab. Algieri is also much taller, 5'10 to the 5'6 Pacquiao.
"Algieri has a good reach advantage and we're going to have to get past that and his jab. That will be our biggest problem. We have ways to do that," Roach said.
