Bradley: I’ll beat Pacquiao easy in the rematch; he can’t handle movement

By Chris Williams: WBO welterweight champion Timothy Bradley (29-0, 12 KO’s) has seen everything there is from Manny Pacquiao’s game in beating him earlier this month in Las Vegas, and Bradley sees it as being no problem exposing Pacquiao a second time. Bradley thinks Pacquiao has gotten old and can’t handle movement anymore.

Bradley say to mydesert.com “The second fight will be a lot easier, because all I got to do is move on him. I had more energy than Pacquiao in our fight. I’ll just out-box him and move. It’s tough for Pacquiao if he has to chase me. He likes to stay in one place and punch.”

Bradley is obviously right, because Pacquiao was baffled by Bradley’s movement and helpless to land his single right hand shots. Early in the fight, Pacquiao had some success landing his left hand pot shots in the last seconds of the round. But in the 2nd half of the fight, Bradley figured out that Pacquiao was only capable of fighting hard in the last seconds of the round, and all he did was maneuver to avoid the Filipino.

It was too easy for Bradley. Pacquiao looked frustrated, and showed it by slamming his gloves together, as if urging Bradley to come at him like his sparring partners do so that Pacquiao could have it easy. I blame some of that on Pacquiao’s trainer Freddie Roach by hiring sparring partners that were completely different from Bradley.

Roach had sparring partners like Ruslan Provodnikov, a fighter that tends to right after his opponents to brawl. That was never going to work, because Bradley is a boxer/puncher and he makes adjustments. It isn’t one size fits all with this guy, which is why I thought Roach was in the dark about what Bradley was going to be doing in the ring. You’d think that Pacquiao would have noticed that he wasn’t getting the right kind of sparring and would have told Roach what time it is. Either that, or dump Roach and find a trainer that did know what Bradley was going to do. That’s what I have done had I been Pacquiao.

But Bradley is right. It’s going to be a lot easier in the rematch with Pacquiao because he knows how to beat him now. Pacquiao can’t handle movement at all, and he’s lousy at cutting off the ring.