Bradley-Abregu: Key to victory for Luis – Load up on the right hand

By Boxing News - 07/05/2010 - Comments

By Jim Dower: It’s pretty clear that unbeaten knockout artist Luis Carlos Abregu (29-0, 23 KO’s) has little chance of out-boxing unbeaten Timothy Bradley (25-0, 11 KO’s) when they meet up in their non-title fight in two weeks on July 17th at the Agua Cliente Casino, in Rancho Mirage, California. Abregu, 27, doesn’t have the hand speed or the boxing ability to beat a quality fighter like Bradley.

With Abregu struggling to beat the likes of Irving Garcia, David Esrtrada and Richard Gutierrez, it’s likely that the only way that Abregu has any chance of beating a talented – but much smaller – fighter like Bradley is if he knocks him out.

In that case, Abegu is going to have to be looking knockout from the word go when he steps in the ring with Bradley. He can’t waste fiddling around with his jab and hoping against hope that he can somehow out-box Bradley. That’s not going to happen.

Bradley is too fast, too skilled and will be staying out of range of Abregu’s jabs. This is why I think Abregu is going to have to bull rush the smaller 5’6″ Bradley, get in close enough range to land his bombs and hope for the best. Abregu doesn’t have much of a left hand, so it’s going to have to be his big right hand that gets him out of this fight. Abegu needs to get Bradley’s respect immediately in the fight. The way to this is to reach back for everything and hit Bradley as hard as he can humanly do it.

Doesn’t matter if Abregu misses. He needs to really hit Bradley like he’s trying to shatter him to a million pieces. If he hits him hard enough, Bradley, if he’s still standing, will be cautious and less interested in taking chances. At that point, Abregu needs to go after Bradley like he’s hunting small game and tearing into him with the hardest shots that he can unload.

Bradley will be fighting back tooth and nail, there’s no doubt, but Abregu has to make every punch meaningful because he really doesn’t have much of a chance at boxing Bradley. With any luck, Abregu might, at the very least, stagger Bradley with one of his big rights.

Bradley has been fighting much smaller fighters up to this point in his career, and will be taking on a completely different type of fighter with the big punching and much taller Abregu. Bradley won’t be accustomed to getting hit this hard.

This is why Abregu has to jump on Bradley while he’s still cold in the 1st round and give it all he’s got to try and take him out in the opening round. If I’m Abregu, I’m thinking is a three round fight, and I’m putting everything I can into knocking Bradley out in those three rounds.

Abregu tires out once he gets past the 6th round, and if he hasn’t knocked Bradley out by that point then he probably won’t. He has to go all out, throw every punch like he’s trying to decapitate Bradley and pray that one of them hurts him enough to get the stoppage.



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