By Chris Williams: WBO welterweight champion Tim Bradley (31-0, 12 KO’s) thinks Manny Pacquiao (55-5-2, 38 KO’s) has lost his nerve since being knocked cold by Juan Manuel Marquez in December 2012. That stoppage loss seems to have taken something out of Pacquiao’s confidence in his ability to take a hard shot, Bradley believes. As it is, Bradley feels that Pacquiao was afraid to get hit by him in their fight in June of 2012. But now that Pacquiao has been stopped by Marquez, Bradley thinks Pacquiao will be even more gun-shy and afraid to throw his shots for fear he’ll get hit with something.
“I think that he might not want to engage to much with me,” Bradley said to Fighthype. “He was real defensive for some reason…This time around, I don’t think he’s gonna engage that much. He got hurt, he admitted that [Brandon] Rios hurt him with a shot.”
If Pacquiao doesn’t engage with Bradley then he’ll probably lose the fight, because Pacquiao’s only chance of beating Bradley is to outwork him and land enough punches to show the judges that he’s superior fighter. Bradley will likely be moving a lot and making Pacquiao miss his shots. If Bradley is able to clown Pacquiao like he did with Marquez then we could see another win for Bradley.
Pacquiao did admit that he had been hurt by Rios in their fight last November in Macao, China. But it looked like Pacquiao was just trying to be gracious to Rios by saying that he was hurt by him, because the fight was so one-sided. Rios was more like a punching bag than an opponent, and he ended up making the fight not worth watching due to his lack of speed. With an opponent that bad, of course Pacquiao is going to try and build him up afterwards. It’s a shame that Bob Arum of Top Rank couldn’t find a quality opponent for Pacquiao to fight instead of digging up Rios, who was coming off of a loss to Mike Alvarado when he took the fight.
Bradley doesn’t have the kind of power that should make Pacquiao hesitant to engage with him. If Pacquiao can’t let his punches go against Bradley then he needs to think seriously about retiring, because this is an opponent that he should be able to walk through. Floyd Mayweather Jr. would easily beat Bradley if that fight were to take place. Bradley’s too slow and powerless to compete against Mayweather. Pacquiao can probably walk through him if he doesn’t mind chasing Bradley around the ring for a while in order to make that happen.
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