By Chris Williams: IBF/WBA light welterweight champion Lamont Peterson sees unbeaten challenger Timothy Bradley (28-0, 12 KO’s) as having a very good chance of pulling off an upset over WBO welterweight champion Manny Pacquiao (54-3-2, 38 KO’s) in their fight on June 9th at the MGM Grand, Las Vegas, Nevada, U.S. Peterson sees it coming down to Bradley’s ability to handle Pacquiao’s power. If he can take his shots, then he sees him winning.

Peterson told RingTV “I think Timothy wins that fight if he can take Pacquiao’s punch, because Pacquiao does have one-punch power. If he can take Pacquiao’s punch all night, then Timothy wins the fight. That’s my prediction on that fight.”

That’s my prediction as well. Pacquiao was never a good boxer to begin with, and has had to get by on his power and speed alone to win his fights. Now that he’s slowing down and his legs are starting to go, he’s very beatable as we saw with his highly questionable win over Juan Manuel Marquez in his last fight. That was Pacquiao getting hammered each time he tried to throw anything and he just looked old and past it in that fight.

Peterson knows what Bradley is capable of because he lost a one-sided 12 round unanimous decision to him in December 2009. Bradley really dominated Peterson on the inside and made it look effortless. It takes a special kind of fighter to do that to Peterson, and Bradley was the one to do it.

Pacquiao isn’t much of an inside fighter and Bradley can really take advantage of Pacquiao and run him down on the inside. Pacquiao’s stamina isn’t all that good and Bradley could end up wearing him down by fighting at a fast pace. There’s a lot of miles on Pacquiao’s odometer and I could see him getting tired and then worked. The only question is whether the judges will give a less popular fighter like Bradley the decision. It might take a knockout for him to get a decision against boxing’s cash cow Pacquiao. We saw what happened to Marquez in his three fights against Pacquiao. It’s not hard to see Bradley ending up in the same boat as Marquez.