Pacquiao has an opportunity to learn from his loss to Bradley

By Chris Williams: It’s not so bad that Manny Pacquiao got beat by Tim Bradley. It’s actually a good thing that the Filipino fighter was finally beaten, because it was bound to happen eventually anyway once he fought a halfway decent fighter instead of old and beat guys like Antonio Margarito and 40-year-old Shane Mosley.

But the loss to Bradley really gave Pacquiao a gift in that it showed to him clearly if he opens his eyes that he’s not fighting hard for the full three minutes of each round anymore. He’s become in essence a fighter that fights hard for 20 to 30 seconds of every round. In other words, Pacquiao has become the welterweight division’s version of Arthur Abraham.

Pacquiao can learn from this if he’s not in denial and blaming the loss on the referee. I don’t know how Pacquiao could look at his stumbling performance against Bradley and come away from watching it thinking that he won the fight. You got to be objective. If I was Pacquiao and I saw myself missing all night long with most of my power shots, stumbling around, and only fighting hard in the very tail end of every round, I’d think I deserved to lose the fight. But then again, I’d be real about myself about the three fights with Juan Manuel Marquez and I’d see those as all losses by me.

But this is a good thing that Pacquiao got beat by Bradley, because if he’s not too old or too shot to improve, maybe he can work on his stamina to get in better condition so that he can fight hard for the full three minutes of each round instead of just the last seconds. That would be a tremendous help in his chances of beating whoever he faces in his next bout, whether that be Bradley or whoever.

Pacquiao needs to be able to move around like he used it. It’s actually kind of sad to watch Pacquiao from 2009 in his fight against Miguel Cotto and then see him in his bout against Bradley last month, because Pacquiao has really aged a lot in those three years, and his movements are so much slower than they were back then. He was a three minute fighter back then and could move the entire time. It was impressive, but now, he’s really slipped as a fighter and is lucky if he fight hard enough to get minute of action.