on3m@n@rmy said:
I did not see the Pac-Bradley fight. Can someone who saw it explain how Pac loses the fight when by fight's end he has these stats to his advantage?
- punches connected: 253-159 (in favor of Pacquiao)
- jabs connected: 63-51 (in favor of Pacquiao)
- power punches: 190-108 (in favor of Pacquiao)
And the LA Times reported he was the aggressor, backing Bradley up many times. They reported they had to go back 20 or more years to find a more stunning/bewildering decision.
Promoter Bob Arum is quoted saying,
I don't believe like Arum hints that they are really that stupid. Sounds like all 3 judges were paid off. Yes, I meant all 3 because they had to make sure it would be a split decision. Otherwise the cries of foul play would be even greater. I'm not saying there was foul play, but it just looks that way unless someone can explain what really happened.
Pacquiao also connected on 33% of his punches, Bradley just 19%. Bradley threw a few more punches than Pac, but that is meaningless if they don't land.
I think this does smell of a fix. You often see one judge with a very different card from the other two, and assume it's because of bias, incompetence, or maybe valuing different things. But here you have three cards very close to each other, but completely different from what everyone else saw. Every sportswriter I know of had Pac by at least 9 rounds to 3. And Arum said when he went up to Bradley after the fight, but before the decision was announced, Bradley said he tried hard, but Pac was too good for him.
The two judges who had Bradley winning had Pacquiao winning four of the first six rounds, which is reasonable. It's in the second half of the fight where they gave Bradley almost everything.
I even wonder if Pac could have been in on the fix. The theory being he's given up on a fight with Mayweather, and sees a rematch with Bradley as the next best moneymaker. I found it a little remarkable that Pacquiao took the decision so calmly. Maybe he's just a very gracious loser, but considering the stakes--any remaining chance for a Mayweather fight is probably gone--you would expect he would have been angry and bitter. He didn't sound particularly upset at all. He even mentioned that he took it easy in several rounds, because he thought he was leading easily, and I think played defensively in the twelfth round, when it seemed Bradley had to KO him to win--and still all that didn'f frustrate him. And surely Freddie Roach should have been, but I don't think he commented much, either.
I don't think this is good for Bradley, either. The controversy obscures that he fought quite well, going toe to toe for twelve rounds with a guy who had larger opponents running away from him in the ring. Despite straining ligaments in his foot so badly in the second round that he was actually in a wheelchair after the fight was over! His other foot also had some problem.
Then again, considering Pac's previous fight with Marquez, maybe he has more trouble with smaller guys. Big guys like Margarito and Cotto hit harder than Bradley or Marquez, but they had trouble landing punches with Pac, or avoiding being hit by him. Maybe Bradley and Marquez both had advantages in that respect. Or maybe Pacquiao just isn't the fighter he was a year or two ago. Hard to say.
Assuming Pacquiao wins the rematch, he would next be available to fight next spring. Even assuming Mayweather wants to fight him and a deal can be made, both men will surely be past their prime by then. That, plus the dent in Pacquiao's seeming invulnerability, would make that bout much less anticipated than it would have been a year or two ago.
History will remember that they had a chance to make the most lucrative fight in history in their prime, and didn't do it. They should have learned from Juan Manuel Lopez, who was on a collision course with Yuriokis Gamboa, until Juan Ma lost in a stunning upset. Then he lost the rematch. Now that dream match is gone. They had a chance to make it, kept delaying, and the chance was lost.
The saddest recent news in boxing, though, has to be Paul Williams, apparently paralyzed from the waist down from a motorcycle accident. He was supposed to fight Canelo Alvarez this fall, which should have been a terrific fight. Williams was a real anomaly in the ring, 6'2" with a longer reach than many heavyweights, but capable of fighting at 154 or possibly even 147.
Update:
Bob Arum now says he wants an investigation, and won’t have a rematch until and unless that happens. Meanwhile, one of the judges who scored it for Bradley defends himself:
"If this were American Idol, without a doubt, Manny Pacquiao would have won," Ford said. "But it was not. I gave an honest opinion. I had Pacquiao up 4-2, I think, at the end of six rounds. I thought he hurt Bradley a couple of times early in the fight. But when the bell rang to end that round, it was over and what happens in one round doesn't carry over to the next round. They're separate units.
"In the second half of the fight, Pacquiao picked off a lot of punches to the head, but Bradley landed some hard body shots. That hurt Pacquiao. I don't mean it hurt him in the sense of it physically hurting him, but in terms of scoring and piling up points. Bradley did an excellent job standing his ground as a boxer. Remember, it's a boxing match and Bradley demonstrated his ability to box expertly."
"In pro boxing, you look for damage, and if the punches are equal and the damage is equal, you are looking for effective aggression, and that does not necessarily mean the guy going forward," Ford said. "Effective aggression can be a guy going back. And then you look at ring generalship, and that's all about control.
"When you score a fight of that magnitude, you know the criticism comes with the job. But unless you are totally focused on that scoring zone for three minutes, it's impossible to score the fight correctly. I know you can't do it talking into a microphone. It was a close fight in my mind that could have gone either way. The result was nothing more than three judges giving an honest opinion, and nothing other than that."
If you can be aggressive while going backwards, then I know a lot of very aggressive riders in the pro peloton.
http://sports.yahoo.com/news/boxing...-ford-.html;_ylt=Atq5ZDkErlXSvLZjsbjZMog5nYcB