By Allan Fox: WBO welterweight champion Timothy Bradley (30-0, 12 KO’s) sees himself as the younger and faster guy and believes those qualities will lead him to victory over Juan Manuel Marquez (55-6-1, 40 KO’s) on October 12th in their HBO pay per view bout at the Thomas & Mack Center, in Las Vegas, Nevada, USA.
Bradley turns 30 in August, while Marquez turns 40. However, Bradley didn’t look all that fast in his last fight against Ruslan Provodnikov last March in winning a close 12 round unanimous decision.
Bradley also didn’t look very powerful, as Provodkin was able to walk through his shots all night to punish him with big power shots.
Bradley ended up getting knocked down in the 12th, and staggered several other times in the fight. It was supposed to have been an easy fight for Bradley but it ended up being a really tough one.
Bradley said to ESPN, “I have speed, quickness and I am the younger fighter. All of that will be the key weapons to beating Marquez, which I will do on Oct. 12.”
You can throw out the age being an advantage for Bradley because it’s not. Physically, Marquez is more like a fighter in his early 30s than someone about to turn 40. He’s aged very well.
Bradley won’t have any advantage at all in age, and I would venture to guess that Marquez is the younger fighter physically. Bradley’s put on a lot of weight recently and taking that fat off won’t help him any in this fight.
The speed and quickness that Bradley once had while fighting at 140, has been lost in him moving up in weight to 147. Bradley’s a lot slower in this weight class and all the extra muscle he’s carrying around hasn’t translated to better power. It just seems to have slowed him down and not giving him any benefit in throwing harder shots.
Marquez will have to make sure he’s busy enough to win this fight because he can’t count on being able to knock Bradley out like he did Manny Pacquiao last December. It’s possible that Marquez could knock Bradley out, because there’s always a chance that Bradley’s chin won’t be the same after the beating he took from Provodnikov, but Marquez can’t be sure about that.
To have a really good chance of winning, he’s going to have to throw enough punches to where he’s matching Bradley’s work rate. Marquez can’t afford to give the judges a reason to give Bradley the victory.
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