Provodnikov to be trained by Roach for Bradley fight

By Boxing News - 02/02/2013 - Comments

roach4523By Allan Fox: WBO welterweight champion Tim Bradley (29-0, 12 KO’s) will be facing another Freddie Roach trained fighter when he steps inside the ring for his next fight on March 16th against Ruslan Provodnikov (22-1, 15 KO’s) at the Home Depot Center in Carson, California.

The 29-year-old Russian born Provodnikov is trained by Freddie Roach, and he’s worked as a sparring partner in the past for Roach’s best fighter Manny Pacquiao. Last June, Bradley faced Pacquiao in Las Vegas, Nevada and ended up beating him a controversial 12 round split decision.

Roach didn’t have much good advice to help Pacquiao in that fight, although Pacquiao looked good enough to deserve the decision. However, Pacquiao has problems with Bradley’s movement, and that enabled Bradley to impress two of the judges to get the decision.

Roach is going to have to come up with a genius strategy if he wants Provodnikov to beat Bradley because simply telling him to fight aggressive may not do the trick. Roach’s game strategy for Pacquiao’s recent fight against Juan Manuel Marquez was for Pacquiao to be totally aggressive at all times so that he could wear Marquez down and stop him in the same way Pacquiao used to score a lot of knockouts earlier in his career.

Pacquiao attempted to follow Roach’s advice and it worked miserably for him, leading him to being knocked out in the 6th. If Roach decides to use a similar strategy for Provodnikov, then we could see Provodnikov knocked out just like Pacquiao was. It’s hard to picture Bradley knocking anyone out because he really doesn’t have much in the way of power even when he’s loading up on his shots.

Roach is probably going to tell Provodnikov to go after Bradley to prevent him from using the entire ring like he did in beating Pacquiao. Had Pacquiao been able to cut off the ring and force Bradley to fight him, then I have no doubts Pacquiao would have won the fight by a knockout.



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