By Chris Williams: Timothy Bradley has gained an unfair reputation as someone without any power or hand speed to speak of. Bradley says that his opponents say that until they face him and they’re grabbing him in clinches to keep from getting hit by him. Bradley feels he does have respectable power and he intends on displaying that power against WBO welterweight champion Manny Pacquiao on June 9th.

Bradley told ESPN “People say ‘Bradley doesn’t have power.’ But guys haven’t been willing to stand in and fight me. Instead, they’re hugging on me, want to dance with me. That’s not my fault. Look at [Joel] Casamayor and [Devon] Alexander. I don’t have that one-punch power but these dudes sure do like to hold when they get close to me.”

Bradley is someone that a lot of fighters try to slow down on the inside by grabbing. He’s just too fierce in close and they can’t seem to deal with it, so they instinctively grab. I don’t think Pacquiao will do that in this fight on June 9th, but he may wished he had by the end of the fight because I think Bradley’s youth, power and skills will bring out the old age in Pacquiao that we’ve been seeing lately in his fights. To be sure, Pacquiao looks good when he’s pounding away at the mitts of his trainer Freddie Roach during training camp and when he’s beating up on some hapless sparring partner hired to put Pacquiao through his paces, but it won’t be the same story when he enters the ring against a young, hungry and energetic Bradley. He’s going to make Pacquiao look like the old man that barely escaped with a win over Juan Manuel Marquez last November when Pacquiao was given another questionable victory over the Mexican.

Bradley continues “I don’t have that one punch knockout power, but I can back you off me and I have put guys on the canvas, including [Junior] Witter, [Lamont] Peterson, Edner Cherry. I keep guys honest with my power.”

I agree with Bradley. He’s been able to consistently make his opponents back off from him with his power and he’s also knocked some of them down with big shots. Pacquiao is facing a more dangerous threat in this fight than he did against Marquez and I don’t know that he’s got enough left in the rank at this point in his career to get past Bradley.