By Chris Williams: Trainer Teddy Atlas wants his fighter Tim Bradley to make sure that he doesn’t let Manny Pacquiao dictate the pace of the fight and nail him with left hands in their fight on April 9 next month.

Pacquiao and Bradley will be fighting for the third time on HBO PPV, and Atlas, who is Bradley’s new trainer, feels that his fighter will beat Pacquiao in this match if he fights a smart fight. Bradley lost the last fight against Pacquiao in 2014, and many boxing fans feel that Bradley deserved to lose the first fight in 2012.

Atlas disagrees with the fans. He thinks the first fight was a draw. Atlas isn’t saying anything about the second fight, which means he must see it as a win for Pacquiao.

“Not to allow Pacquiao to control the pace or rhythm of the fight,” said Atlas about the keys to victory for Bradley against Pacquiao for 4/9. “Eliminate situations where Timmy is hit with lefts – either off the jab or leads. In the second fight, although I know Tim was injured, Pacquiao was able to walk him down and we can’t allow that.”

Bradley was getting hit with more than just left hands in both of the Pacquiao fights. He was getting nailed by plenty of right hands too. If it was only left hands that Bradley had to worry about in the two Pacquiao fights, then he would have won them both. But the problem is Pacquiao was hitting him with both hands, and doing a good job of it.

Pacquiao’s superior punching power was the telling factor in both of the first two fights between them. Bradley didn’t have the power to match Pacquiao’s hard shots. No matter how hard Bradley tried, he just didn’t have the power to fight Pacquiao on even terms. I don’t see that as something that will change in the rematch because Bradley isn’t punching any harder than he did in the first two fights.

In Bradley’s last bout against Brandon Rios, Bradley was only able to hit hard when throwing to the body. Even then, he wasn’t throwing with major welterweight type power. Bradley was in there with a fattened up former lightweight and not in there with a natural welterweight.

Going to the body against an out of shape former light weight like Rios was all Bradley needed or him to take Rios out. I don’t think Bradley is going to be able to do the same thing against Pacquiao. If Bradley goes to the body, then he’s going to leave himself open upstairs

“For us, speed will be an important part of the equations, but calculated and controlled speed,” said Atlas. “I didn’t see any influence from injury in the Mayweather fight. When he had to throw that hand, he did without wincing or discomfort. As for age, I haven’t seen any dissipation and I don’t expect any now.”

I do agree with Atlas about Pacquiao’s right shoulder injury in his fight against Floyd Mayweather Jr. last May. I didn’t see any signs of Pacquiao being injured during the fight. There was no wincing on Pacquiao’s part when throwing punches during the fight, and he didn’t appear to favor one of his arms over the other. If there was an injury, he did a good job of taking the pain and not showing Mayweather that he was hurt.