By Chris Williams: Timothy Bradley (28-0, 12 KO’s) sees a lot of deterioration in the game of WBO welterweight champion Manny Pacquiao (54-3-2, 38 KO’s) in the past couple of fights and he feels he’s got the skills to take advantage of Pacquiao’s ring wear.

Bradley told the LA Times “It wasn’t so much that [Juan Manuel] Marquez exposed Pacquiao, as much as he is not as spectacular. It’s harder for Pacquiao to land his shots now, and you even saw that in the Shane Mosley fight. Look, Marquez had Pacquiao’s number, and Marquez is 38 and past his prime. Here they are making excuses.”

Bradley is completely correct, although Pacquiao has been fading a lot longer than the Mosley fight. Pacquiao hasn’t looked good since beating Miguel Cotto in November 2009. That was the last fight where Pacquiao had the ability to move around the ring and throw was a lot of hand speed. He’s slowed down since then in fights against Joshua Clottey, Antonio Margarito, Shane Mosley and Juan Manuel Marquez. It’s obviously a combination of natural aging, eating a lot to stay at an artificially high weight, and the wear and tear of taking hard shots in the Clottey, Margarito and Mosley fights.

With each progressing fight, Pacquiao looks less and less impressive. What Bradley saw of Pacquiao’s deterioration in the Marquez and Mosley fights was already started as far back as the Clottey bout. I think Pacquiao’s fight with Cotto took a lot of out of the Filipino star, because even though he won the fight, he took a lot of really hard head shots from Cotto in that fight. Pacquiao didn’t look like the same fighter in his next bout after that against Clottey. Pacquiao’s legs were gone and he couldn’t move like he did before.

Bradley is younger, faster and stronger than Marquez. Bradley saw what Marquez was able to do to Pacquiao, and he saw the mistakes that he made. Bradley plans on taking the fight to Pacquiao and wearing him down – whether on the inside or the outside – to take a decision on June 9th at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas.