Bradley defeats Pacquiao: So Much Controversy Over Such a Tight Fight

By Boxing News - 06/10/2012 - Comments

Image: Bradley defeats Pacquiao: So Much Controversy Over Such a Tight FightBy Gareth Rees: You may have heard that Tim Bradley beat Manny Pacquiao last night, in what was a very controversial split decision. If you have read my previous post yes I admit it, I got it wrong.

As you probably already know two judges scored the fight 115-113 in Bradley’s favour, with one having the same score in Pacquiao’s favour. I personally also had it a close fight scoring it 115-114 to Pacquiao; I will get on to how HBO scored it later. One thing that is certain is that this fight left a lot more questions than answers for everyone.

I felt this fight had a lot of similarities to Pacquiao’s controversial win over Juan Manuel Marquez. Bradley obviously set his game plan very similar to that of Marquez trying to counter punch and use his jab. I thought Bradley didn’t use his jab nearly enough in the first half of the fight and he only really established it from Round 7 onwards. In the Marquez fight Pacquiao suffered from cramping in his calves, which points towards a lack of stamina. While he says he didn’t suffer from the same issue this time, it was noticeable especially in the second half of the fight that Pacquiao looked tired and visibly slower. This is following from the weigh-in where many felt that Pacquiao didn’t look great and was at his heaviest ever weight. What’s most worrying is that Pacquiao won nearly all his rounds by doing very little in the first two minutes, then exploding with a few 10 second burst in the last minute/last thirty seconds. Pacquiao has had a long career and is 33 years old, so is he now over the hill and on the steep decline? One thing’s for sure Mayweather will definitely of heard about this, even if he is in jail and would be licking his lips.

One thing that did make me laugh was the Bob Arum quote “These old f–ks don’t know what they’re looking at. What do you say after this? Nothing in my career has stunned me as much as this decision.” Well obviously Bob must of missed the Pacquiao-Marquez fight, or just forgotten about it. The problem I found when scoring this fight is the same problem as the Pacquiao-Marquez fight. CompuBox showed that Pacquiao landed more punches in ten of the twelve rounds. But that is only because threw about 90% of those punches in the last minute. What do you do, award the two minutes where Bradley seemed to control the pace with his jab, or the last 30 seconds of the round where Pacquiao throws a flurry of punches and has at least one eye catching punch land. This is why I found a lot of the rounds Bradley won were exceptionally close and even had the 10th as a draw.

These tight rounds are reason for the controversy that has arisen from the fight. I definitely felt that the HBO coverage was kissing Pacquiao’s backside a lot, focusing on his 30 seconds of action with the one eye catching punch. No way did Bradley lose 11 of the 12 rounds like HBO Boxing Commentator Harold Lederman said; he did way too much work and controlled the action for around two thirds of nearly every round. But scoring the rounds is purely subjective which is why controversies like this come about, I wouldn’t argue much if the fight was a draw but overall I feel Pacquiao did outclass Bradley, like I predicted.

The result is now in the records so what next? In these modern times everyone is much more suspicious analyzing every quote, claiming everything is fixed. I just want to say that I do not think the fight was fixed. But when the winner of the fight is saying days before he is going to win and then have a rematch which is already booked for November 10th and both fighters have the same promoter, whose name is Bob Arum, thoughts do come in to your head. You have to admit it makes you slightly suspicious. Unfortunately if they are having the rematch in November, it will mean the fight we all wanted before this definitely won’t be happening until next year aka Pacquiao-Mayweather. Also the fight Amir Khan wants and he was saying on twitter last night he wanted Bradley in December also won’t be happening. But does this now mean Mayweather is the undisputed pound-for-pound king again and where are Bradley and Pacquiao now in the rankings? Who knows.



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