By Dan Ambrose: WBO welterweight champion Tim Bradley expects to be fully prepared for everything that his opponent Manny Pacquiao could even think of doing in their fight on April 9 at the MGM Gradn in Las Vegas, Nevada.
Bradley, 32, says his trainer Teddy Atlas is going to think of everything that Pacquiao could possibly come up with in the ring, and they then plan on working to negate all of those things one by one. Bradley doesn’t want to be unprepared for the things that he’s going to see when he gets inside the ring.
Bradley feels that Atlas prepared him completely for his last fight against Brandon Rios last November, and that’s why he was able to batter and stop the 29-year-old in the 9th round. Bradley feels that the training that he got from Atlas was the key factor in why he beat Rios.
Boxing fans would likely disagree with Bradley. Many of them feel that Rios was so out of shape, and so slow that almost any top fighter would have beaten him in the same way that Bradley did on that night. Rios came into the fight overweight at 170 after rehydrating 23 pounds, and he looked like he hadn’t prepared the way that he needed to for the fight.
“I already know what he’s going to do before I even go into the ring,” Bradley said about Pacquiao. “I’m going to be prepared for everything Pacquiao does before I get into the ring. I fight the fight inside the gym, and then go in and fill the sketch in with colors. I plan on having a masterful performance on April 9th. I’m a smart monster now. I’m calm, cool and collective. The theme in this fight is called the ‘log in the ocean.’”
Bradley has complete confidence in his trainer Teddy Atlas. It’s very similar to the confidence that we saw last Saturday night with the confidence that Jean Pascal had in his trainer Freddie Roach. Unfortunately, the confidence didn’t produce a victory for Pascal in his title challenge against IBF/WBA/WBO light heavyweight champion Sergey Kovalev. We could see Bradley’s undying confidence in Atlas shattered to pieces on April 9th, when Bradley finds out the hard way that he’s simply not good enough to beat Pacquiao no matter who is the captain of his training ship.
To be sure, Atlas talks a good game, and he definitely has the gift for gab. However, Atlas doesn’t possess magical powers. He’s not someone who can waive a wand in front of Bradley’s face to turn him into a better fighter than he’s been in the past. He’s not going to be able to turn the weak-punching Bradley into the next Julian Jackson. Bradley will never be a one-punch knockout artist. He’s just going to be a slapper no matter what Atlas tells him during training. Atlas can give him the old fireman talk and it’s still not going to help him when he gets inside the ring with Pacquiao on April 9. I see this fight going badly for Bradley with him getting beaten worse than he ever has before, because Pacquiao is going to be motivated to take his head off so that he can finish their three-fight rivalry with a 2-1 record.
Comments are closed.