Pacquiao: If I get a chance to KO Bradley, why not?

By Boxing News - 01/28/2016 - Comments

Manny PacquiaoBy Allan Fox: Manny Pacquiao (57-6-2, 38 KOs) isn’t predicting a knockout win in his third fight against Tim “Desert Storm” Bradley (33-1-1, 13 KOs) on April 9, but if he hurts him and has him in trouble, he says he’ll go for the knockout.

Pacquiao is done making predictions for knockout wins, because it’s been seven years since he knocked out his last opponent in stopping Miguel Cotto in the 12th round of a catch-weight fight in 2009. However, that hasn’t stopped Pacquiao’s trainer Freddie Roach from predicting a knockout.

Roach sees Pacquiao stopping the 32-year-old Bradley in the 9th round. Roach has been predicting knockout wins for Pacquiao for the last six years and it’s not happened for him. The good thing is that Roach is no longer predicting early knockouts like he used to. He’s made some adjustments as it’s become increasingly clear that Pacquiao’s ability to score knockouts has all but disappeared as he’s aged in the sport.

At 37, it’s hard to see Pacquiao being able to KO Bradley or any of the top fighters unless he catches them just right and is able to pour it on to get the stoppage win.

“If I get the chance (to knock him out), why not? I want to win convincingly,” Pacquiao said.

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Bradley has been hurt in fights against Ruslan Provodnikov, Diego Chaves and Jessie Vargas. Those guys were unable to finish Bradley off after they hurt him though. Pacquiao is better at putting his punches together when he gets a guy hurt, and he might be able to go after Bradley to finish him off after he gets him in trouble.

Bradley is going to be looking for his own KO in this fight, and he’s feeling pretty confident now that he’s being trained by Teddy Atlas. Bradley feels invincible now that he has Atlas training him, and you can bet that he’s going to be looking to fight harder than he did in the first two fights he had with Pacquiao. That could play into Pacquiao’s hands if Bradley tries to do too much in this fight because he could catch him with a big shot and then look to finish him off before he’s had a chance to recover.

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“Manny wants to go out with a bang and knock Tim out so I predict a knockout in ninth,” said Roach via digitaljournal.com.

Pacquiao did not look good in his last fight against Mayweather in May of 2015, and it’s difficult to imagine him being able to score a knockout coming off of a performance like that. Pacquiao tore his right shoulder up in that fight and he’s since had rotator cuff surgery to repair the problem.

Pacquiao will be fighting for the first time since the injury and it’s possible that he might not be at 100 percent for this fight. Pacquiao and Top Rank opted not to take a tune-up fight to ease back into fighting top level opposition slowly. It’s a risky thing what they’re doing by fighting a difficult opponent like Bradley after such a serious injury. Pacquiao might end up living to regret not taking a tune-up.



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