By Chris Williams: Manny Pacquiao (57-6-2, 38 KOs) is saying that his opponent WBO 147lb belt holder Tim Bradley (33-1-1, 12 KOs) has improved since the last time the two of them fought each other two years ago in April 2014 at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, Nevada. Pacquiao won that fight by a 12 round unanimous decision by the scores of 116-112, 118-110 and 116-112.
Pacquiao had little problems out-slugging Bradley to win an easy 12 round decision. The fight was so one-sided that it makes no sense for the two of them to face each other again. However, with Pacquiao’s 84-year promoter Bob Arum having a habit of making in house fights involving his own Top Rank fighters, a third fight between Pacquiao and Bradley was a predictable match-up.
Their last fight against each other brought 800,000 pay-per-view buys in 2014, and Arum doesn’t have anyone else in his Top Rank stable that he could put in with Pacquiao to bring in those kinds of numbers; not that the third fight will necessarily bring in those numbers. Arum is obviously hoping the fight will.
Pacquiao makes a percentage of the PPV money. He has guaranteed amount he’ll be getting for the fight, but the more pay-per-view buys the fights, the more money Pacquiao can make. If Pacquiao and Bradley can drum up more interest from the boxing public by making it seem like this fight will be a different one from the two previous fights they’ve had, then they both come out ahead.
“Bradley had changed a lot. Under his new trainer Teddy Atlas, he had metamorphosed from being a boxer to an aggressive prizefighter,” Pacquiao said to philboxing.com. “Given his new fighting style, I believe our third ring collision would be action-packed. So, don’t miss it,” Pacquiao said.
Bradley is really fighting no different with trainer Atlas than he did when he was trained by Joel Diaz. As far as I can tell, the only thing that Bradley did a little differently in his last fight against an out of shape Brandon Rios was circle the ring a few times, and back off occasionally after landing a few punches. As flabby and out of shape as Rios was, Bradley merely prolonged the fight by backing off instead of just staying in the pocket and working over Rios.
There was no improvement in Bradley’s game whatsoever. The only change was he seems to be thinking too much, and fighting in a way that hurts his performance rather than helps it. Atlas has not helped Bradley in my view. He’s made him more mechanical and not as good as he was before. Bradley is a decent welterweight, but I don’t put him up there with the top welterweights like Keith Thurman, Kell Brook, Amir Khan, Shawn Porter, and Errol Spence Jr. I think Bradley loses to all of those fighters.
“I can’t say that there would be a knockout. What I can assure you is I would train and work hard for this fight. We will study his latest video and try to make some adjustments to be able to neutralize his new fighting style,” Pacquiao said.
The chances of Pacquiao scoring a knockout in this fight are pretty slim due to Bradley likely using more movement in this fight than he’s done in the past. Atlas is on record for saying that he thought Bradley should have used more movement in the second Pacquiao-Bradley fight in 2014. Atlas is obviously going to have Bradley using an in and out style on April 9th in their fight on HBO PPV rather than having him slug with Pacquiao like he did in their second fight. Pacquiao is not going to be able to score a knockout with Bradley moving so much.
“Now, I am ending my boxer career to take on a bigger responsibility – to serve my country and the Filipino people,” said Pacquiao.
Pacquiao is expected to win a senate seat in the election in the Philippines in May. What we don’t know is whether Pacquiao will be able to keep that senate seat. In the U.S., politicians frequently lose their seat in the senate. If Pacquiao is voted out after a few years in the senate, he will have arguably wasted his time. He might be better off sticking it out in the sport of boxing and waiting until his skills are completely eroded before going into politics.
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