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Las Vegas, NV– As it gets closer and closer to tomorrow night, I can’t help but feel like Timothy Bradley is getting led to the slaughterhouse. And that is unfortunate for him. By his own hand and whatever information his team gave him, he passed on a fight with Amir Khan not that long ago, most likely because of economic reasons and possibly due to the risk. Although Bradley would have gone into that fight as a slight underdog because of Khan’s length and speed advantage, that was not a fight that he didn’t at least have a chance to win.
“A MERE CON” DIFFERENT FROM PACQUIAO
With all that being said, going against Manny Pacquiao is quite different from going up against Amir Khan. Manny doesn’t have a length advantage like Khan but he does have just about every advantage imaginable against Bradley. The problem isn’t with what kind of fighter Bradley is, but rather what kind of fighter Bradley isn’t. He isn’t a guy who can be effective while switching from counter puncher to aggressor like the great Erik Morales or Juan Manuel Marquez.
BRADLEY HAS NOT SHOWN THE ABILITY TO CHANGE
At least we haven’t yet seen him do that. And if we haven’t yet seen him fight that way yet, I highly doubt he’ll be able to beat an all-time great while trying out a new fighting style if he chooses to do so. Erik Morales fought beautifully in the first fight of their trilogy by switching back and forth from counter puncher to aggressor time and again. If you have that skill set and the ring smarts to fight that way you maybe can pull off a victory versus the Pacman, but that is a lot to ask because your skill set is partially natural talent and partially developed.
MARQUEZ WAS BY FAR THE BETTER & SMARTER BOXER
Ring smarts are mainly developed during your career in fights, and by your trainer or team during training. Marquez also possesses a high level set of skills set and is above average when it comes to ring smarts. And we all saw that he fought a very intelligent fight in Pacquiao/Marquez III. One thing to remember is that Marquez also had seen Manny for 24 rounds and formulated a game plan to defeat the Pacquaiao, something he did in the minds of many, myself included, but not the judges.
BRADLEY’S CHANCES TO WIN
Now back to Timothy Bradley…I see a couple of ways for Bradley to attempt to tackle Manny.
1) Surprise Manny and inititate a “toe to toe” slugfest. To me this is a completely crazy idea. The best defense is an offense and if you don’t switch up your attack and continue to pursue Manny he will hurt you and hurt you bad.
2) Fight Manny counter punching. Not as crazy as going at him in a “guns blazing” type of encounter, but not an employable tactic based upon what we’ve seen from Bradley. Going back to the skill set part of the equation for a moment. Problem is that Bradley doesn’t possess the ability to accurately counter punch and he doesn’t punch with KO power.
THE VULTURES ARE CIRCLING THE MGM GRAND
It may seem like I think Bradley is “dead meat” at this point, I do however think that he has two things that the vast majority of other fighters do not possess: Heart and determination. The best example I have of that is when Bradley took on Kendall Holt a few years back. Very early in the fight, Bradley got hit by a lethal-looking left hook that all but took his head clean off of his shoulders.
BRADLEY RISES AND WINS ON ALL THREE CARDS
Somehow, someway, Timothy Bradley got up. Not only did he get up, but he went on to out hustle, out-determine, and out fight Holt the rest of the way. In all of the fights I have seen, I’m hard pressed to remember someone getting up from a shot that big and then going on to win the fight.
DOES BRADLEY HAVE A PRAYER HERE?
So is it out of the question for Bradley to win? Well to me it is. I haven’t seen any major slippage (others have) with Manny and I fully expect him to KO or TKO Bradley if Timothy fights him toe to toe or if he tries to box. I imagine we’ll see a lot of mugging and holding early on, but once Bradley gets a taste of the power he’ll try to stay away but unfortunately for him he doesn’t have anything in his arsenal to keep the Filipino off of him once he’s hurt. That being said, Pac wins by TKO or KO!
Steve Boucher