By Allan Fox: Despite beating Tim Bradley (33-2-1, 13 KOs) by a clear 12 round unanimous decision last Saturday night, Manny Pacquiao (58-6-2, 38 KOs) only had a slight edge in connected punches in their fight at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, Nevada. The main difference between the two fighters is the power and the speed of Pacquiao’s shots.
Pacquiao was landing his shots with a lot of force behind them compared to the slower, weaker punches from the 32-year-old Bradley. You could hear Pacquiao’s punches land, and you couldn’t hear Bradley’s nearly as well.
Pacquiao connected on 122 of 439 punches for a connect percentage of 28 percent, according to CompuBox. In contrast, Bradley connected on 99 of 302 shots for a 33 percent connect percentage. It’s interesting that Bradley landed at a higher connect percentage and yet he still lost the fight. That shows you that the judges were more impressed with Pacquiao’s great power and his two knockdowns.
The first knockdown that Pacquiao scored in the fight was in the 7th round, and that was more of a flash knockdown than a case of him hurting Bradley. Pacquiao appeared to hurt Bradley in the second knockdown of the fight in the 9th round when he caught Bradley with two solid shots to the head that put him down hard on the canvas.
“Maybe I’m going to enjoy being retired, or I’m going to miss boxing,” Pacquiao said after the contest. “I can’t say right now.”
It’s likely the sport has seen the last of Pacquiao. He’s had enough time out of the ring to know whether he’d miss it or not. In the last four years, Pacquiao has missed two of the years with him out of the sport after being knocked out by Juan Manuel Marquez in 2012, and then missing another year after his shoulder injury suffered 11 months ago in his loss to Floyd Mayweather Jr.
If Pacquiao really interested in continuing his career, he would say it right now. I think Pacquiao is just being polite to the media by not telling them that he’s retiring for good period, because he obviously knows that they want him to continue fighting.
Pacquiao seems more motivated now by a life in politics than he is in continuing his boxing career. It’s possible that Pacquiao will lose interest in politics once he finds out what the job is like. But it’s going to take him a while before he finds that out.
Pacquiao’s win over Bradley gives him a 2-1 edge in their series. Many fans believe that Pacquiao has a 3-0 edge because his loss to Bradley in their first fight in 2012 was highly controversial. Many people believe that Pacquiao should have been given the decision in that fight. That’s one of the reasons why a third fight between the two fighters really wasn’t needed.
You can argue that the third fight was more of a greed thing rather than one of need. If there was a real need, the fans would have been asking for it. They weren’t. The promoters made the decision it would appear based on the success of the first two fights in terms of PPV buys.
Unfortunately, what’s good once or twice isn’t always good a third time, especially when the first two fights were clearly wins for Pacquiao. The one exception where constant rematches didn’t hurt Pacquiao was his four fights with Juan Manuel Marquez. The public couldn’t get enough of that match-up. The difference is that Pacquiao-Marquez was competitive. Pacquiao-Bradley was always a clear case of Pacquiao being the better fighter.
Bradley looked good last night. He was counter-punching well, and going after Pacquiao. It wasn’t easy for Pacquiao to get the win. Bradley’s lack of hand speed and power hurt him though. He was clearly slower than he’d been in his previous fights with Pacquiao, and his power wasn’t enough to hurt Pacquiao.
Bradley never threw body shots like he’d done in his fight against Brandon Rios last November. It was thought that Bradley would try and throw body shots in the fight after the success that he had against Rios, but it looked like he was afraid to do that due to the risk involved of being counter punched. Bradley throws with more power to the body than he does to the head. Without him throwing body punches, it made it easy for Pacquiao to dominate the action.
Comments are closed.