Pacquiao-Bradley 3: Will Teddy Atlas make a difference for Tim?

By Boxing News - 01/07/2016 - Comments

atlasBy Chris Williams: Top Rank promoter Bob Arum feels that having trainer Teddy Atlas with WBO welterweight champion Tim Bradley (33-1-1, 13 KOs) could help improve interest and obviously pay-per-view sales for his third fight against Manny Pacquiao (57-6-2, 38 KOs) on April 9 at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Whether it will play out that way is unclear. What would seem more important to the boxing fans is whether Atlas can help Bradley, 32, beat Pacquiao legitimately without controversy this time, because the only victory that Bradley has in their previous two fights was a controversial 12 round decision in 2012.

Fans believe that Bradley was given a gift decision by the judges that worked the fight, and it’s hard to argue against that belief if you take the time to sit down and watch the fight on video. Bradley fought well at times, but Pacquiao was a little better in almost every round of the fight.

Atlas is a great talker, and Bradley obviously believes in the things he says. But the truth of the matter is, Atlas isn’t going to be able to come up with many different ideas that weren’t already used by Bradley’s last trainer Joel Diaz in Bradley’s two fights against Pacquiao.

If Atlas is able to come up with a great idea to take advantage of Pacquiao’s weaknesses, then he’s going to be glorified after the fight if Bradley wins without controversy. Atlas will get a ton of credit for the victory, and it wouldn’t be surprising if he’s given most of the credit.

Atlas would then likely see a lot of fighters beating down his door to have him train them, much like Pacquiao’s trainer Freddie Roach has picked up a lot of fighters over the years due to the success of Pacquiao.

Atlas is going to need to some up with some good ideas for Bradley to win this fight, because the general belief is Bradley was only selected because Pacquiao thinks he can beat him. Some fans think that Pacquiao didn’t want to fight someone good like Terence Crawford, Adrien Broner or Amir Khan, because if he lost the fight, it would hurt his political career.

Pacquiao is running for a senate seat in the May elections in the Philippines, and a loss to someone good would likely be a disaster for his political aspirations. The 5’6” Bradley may have only been selected due to Pacquiao feeling confident that he can beat him after the success that he had against him in their two fights in the past together.

There’s not a lot of worry in the minds of Pacquiao’s fans in this fight, because they saw how well Pacquiao did against Bradley in the past. They figure that he’ll do just as well in a third fight. Whether Atlas can be a difference maker in a third fight is going to be interesting to see, because Bradley did not fight well in the past against Pacquiao. To be sure, Bradley was with a different trainer back then, but he was also a little bit younger. I can’t see him being a better fighter now unless Atlas really is great at his job.

Bradley and Atlas have a chance to do a number on Pacquiao if Atlas can come up with a good enough game plan that hasn’t already been used in the past two Pacquiao-Bradley fights. A win for Bradley might even extend Pacquiao’s career, because if he loses the fight, he might wind up losing the election for the senate seat in the Philippines. Pacquiao is supposedly in a strong position to win the election.

It’s likely that Atlas’ strategy for Bradley to win the fight against Pacquiao will involve a lot of movement, jabbing and possibly body punching. Bradley had good results with those things in his victory over an out of shape Brandon Rios recently.

Pacquiao has had problems in the past in taking hard shots to the midsection, and it’s quite possible that he could be weakened by those shots if Bradley throws enough shots to really test him. Bradley acknowledged after his win over Rios that he doesn’t punch with huge power to the head, but he’s got excellent punching power when it comes to throwing to the body.



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