By Chris Williams: It was thought by some fans that new trainer Teddy Atlas’s game plan for his fighter WBO welterweight champion Timothy “Desert Storm” Bradley (33-1-1, 13 KOs) to use in his third fight against Manny Pacquiao (57-6-2, 38 KOs) will be one in which Bradley uses frequent circular movement around the ring in their bout on April 9 on HBO pay-per-view.
However, Bradley is saying that he’s not going to run from Pacquiao in the fight. He says he’s never run in any of his fights, and he’s not going to start now. Boxing fans would argue that Bradley ran much of the time in his win over Juan Manuel Marquez in 2013 in a fight in which Bradley was booed loudly much of the fight due to his movement, and in his first fght with Pacquiao in 2012.
“I’m not running from Pacquiao and I’ll do what I want,” Bradley said to fightnews.com. “I can tell you this. It won’t be like a Floyd fight. We’re not going to run or get spooked, that’s not our style,” Bradley said.
If Bradley isn’t going to use movement like Floyd Mayweather Jr. did in his win over Pacquiao last year in May, and if he’s not going to run like he did in his first fight against Pacquiao in 2012, then it means that Bradley will fight like he did in his second fight with Pacquiao in 2014. This means that Bradley will stay in the pocket more and elect to trade shots with the 37-year-old Pacquiao. That didn’t work for Bradley, however.
Pacquiao was too fast, too busy and too powerful for Bradley. It was a petty one-sided fight with Pacquiao appearing to win 11 of the 12 rounds of the fight in my scoring. If Bradley isn’t going to run around the ring, then he needs to go back to his old trainer Joel Diaz and dump Atlas, because the only thing that Atlas will be able to do with Bradley is have him move more against Pacquiao.
Atlas obviously knows what Bradley’s limitations are in terms of being slower, weaker and not as busy as Pacquiao. Bradley doesn’t have the punching power for him to stand and trade with Pacquiao, and he definitely cannot go on the attack for a prolonged amount of time against Pacquiao without taking a beating.
“In the last fight I had a different mindset. I think that is what affected me in that fight. I was out there being something that I wasn’t instead of staying true to myself,” Bradley said.
Bradley, 32, was more aggressive in his second fight against Pacquiao, and that was something that didn’t work well for him because of his lack of power, speed and size. If Bradley is going to be a different fighter for their third fight on April 9, then he obviously is going to use a lot of movement to keep Pacquiao from getting the better of him. We could also see Bradley to steal rounds by fighting hard for the last 30 seconds of the round to impress the judges.
Great day at The Garden as @MannyPacquiaoTR announces his next and final fight against @Timbradleyjr!#PacBradley pic.twitter.com/0CReFZjnI8
— MSG (@TheGarden) January 21, 2016
I wouldn’t be at all surprised if that’s what Atlas will have Bradley do. He can’t trade with Pacquiao, because it would be suicide to try that tactic. If Bradley chooses to throw body punches at Pacquiao like he did the out of shape Top Rank fighter Brandon Rios, then Pacquiao will murder him with counter shots. I suspect that Bradley will try and throw body shots, but once he gets nailed with some hard shots from Pacquiao, he’ll be trained not to keep trying the body shots.
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