By Chris Williams: WBO welterweight champ Manny Pacquiao is so concerned about getting possibly headbutted in his June 9th fight against fellow Top Rank fighter Timothy Bradley that he plans on training 10 weeks for the fight instead of his usual 8 weeks.

Pacquiao said this about his fight with Bradley as quoted by examiner.com: “Timothy Bradley is undefeated and my concern is a head butt. I have to prepare for that and watch carefully and study to see what I am going to do to keep away from head butt. I need to train hard, at least ten weeks for this fight. It will be good for me to gain muscle…that’s why I need to train ten weeks for this fight.”

Here’s my take: If Pacquiao is worried about fighting Bradley then why didn’t he open his yap and tell his promoter Bob Arum that he wanted nothing to do with Bradley? Did Pacquiao ever thing about speaking up about it? Well, he should have because if he’s going to be worrying about getting cut to ribbons by an occasional headbutt then he shouldn’t be fighting the guy. Headbutts are part of the game and Bradley unfortunately sometimes connects with a few every now and then. But if Pacquiao is going to be sweating bullets over facing him then he should have spoke up and told Arum he wanted another one of his specials, someone from his stable that’ll be there for him to hit on all night long.

Bradley has some skills and he’s not going to drop to all fours like a dog and take it from the Filipino. He’s going to be hitting him with everything but the kitchen sink in this fight, and that likely means an occasional beauty of a headbutt and a mean elbow. Pacquiao will probably have to taste his own blood in this fight, but come one, he’s making like $25 million. What does he expect for that kind of cash? He’s going to have to taste blood and pain to earn that kind of green. Pacquiao may even get his lips and nose busted in this fight, but that’s part of it when you face Bradley. like I said, Pacquiao’s time to speak up was before the fight was announced. It’s too late to cry about it now because he’s stuck with it and is just going to have to somehow take his pain like a man.