By Allan Fox: In two fights against Manny Pacquiao (57-6-2, 38 KOs), we’ve seen Timothy Bradley (33-1-1, 13 KOs) come up with various leg injuries in both fights that have supposedly plagued his performances and slowed him down to the point where he couldn’t move around the ring.
Now with Bradley signed for a third fight against Pacquiao on April the 9th, we could be looking at Bradley suffering additional leg injuries in their fight at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, Nevada. There is something about Pacquiao’s style of fighting that causes Bradley to suffer leg injuries.
I’m not sure exactly what it is, but Bradley doesn’t seem comfortable with the quick foot movements from Pacquiao. Bradley winds up reacting by moving as fast he can, but he then suffers injuries to his legs. In his 2014 fight against Pacquiao, Bradley complained afterwards of having a torn calf muscle from the fight.
Apparently, that was the reason why Bradley had to fight stationary in the second half of the contest. In their first fight, Bradley injured his feet and ankles trying to get away from Pacquiao while he was pressuring him. In looking at when the injury occurred, Bradley didn’t need to move so hastily to try and avoid Pacquiao. If he had just stood his ground and fought normally, he would have probably been fine, but he acted like he was afraid of being knocked out by Pacquiao.
Bradley is top heavy with a lot of muscles in his upper body, but supported by skinny legs. Bradley doesn’t have the physique that supports a lot of fast movements around the ring unfortunately. WBC heavyweight champion Deontay Wilder and former world champion Wladimir Klitschko both have slender legs, but they seem to have more calf muscle than Bradley does, and this would explain for their ability to move around the ring without suffering frequent leg injuries the way that Bradley does.
Teddy Atlas, the new trainer for Bradley, needs to recognize that Bradley needs to limit the amount of movement he makes in the Pacquiao fight on April 9th. If Bradley tries to move away from Pacquiao to avoid his fast attacks, we could see Bradley suffering injuries early on in the fight. Bradley needs to use movement obviously, but should do it in a controlled manner and not moving too fast for his weak wheels to carry him.
It might be in Bradley’s best interest to wear some thick socks to help suffer his weak calf muscles.
This fight could do low numbers in terms of pay-per-view on HBO. Pacquiao’s promoter Bob Arum believes that a selling point for the fight is Bradley’s new trainer Alas. Arum wants to stress the addition of Atlas and the improvements he’s made with Bradley since the last time Pacquiao fought Bradley in 2014. It’s worth a try for Arum to have the focus being more on a new Bradley for this fight. I’m not sure if it’s going to work well enough to get boxing fans to purchase the fight on PPV.
It might be better if Arum tells Atlas to take over the hyping of the fight by doing all the talking and focusing on being over the top for each interview he gives. Thus far, Atlas has been keeping the spotlight off himself by being low key and subdued. However, this is a fight that needs a personality like Atlas in order to attract boxing fans to purchase the fight on PPV. Few people are interested in seeing a third fight between Pacquiao and Bradley, and Top Rank didn’t create a poll to ask the fans who they felt Pacquiao should fight next.
They just had Pacquiao select from a 3-fighter list with two of the fighters being Top Rank guys and the other being an Al Haymon fighter Amir Khan. As we all know, Khan never really had a chance to get the fight, so it came down to Pacquiao fighting one of the two Top Rank guys. If Atlas can take charge of the promoting of the fight, then some fans might buy the fight and it could bring in decent PPV numbers on HBO. But it’s still unlikely that fans will want to pay their hard-earned money to see a third fight between Pacquiao and Bradley no matter what Top Rank and Atlas does.
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