[akhan786Participant]

 

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Pacquiao-Bradley: What Just Happened?

A report from ringside

By Rafe Bartholomew on June 11, 2012

• PRINT

When Michael Buffer read the scorecards Saturday night in boxing’s worst robbery in a major fight since Pernell Whitaker and Julio Cesar Chavez fought to a "draw" in 1993, I was sitting beside a columnist for PhilBoxing.com, a news site that often reads like the Manny Pacquiao Ministry of Propaganda. We were six or seven rows back from ringside, and when it became clear that Timothy Bradley Jr. had been declared winner by split decision over the heavily favored Pacquiao, my companion shot out of his chair and shouted: "WHAT’S HAPPENING? WHAT’S HAPPENING?? THIS IS MADNESS! WHO IS THAT GUY WHO DID THIS?"

That guy (and girl) were Nevada State Athletic Commission judges C.J. Ross and Duane Ford, who each scored the fight 115-113, seven rounds to five, for Bradley. Or, if you choose to believe the whispers that swept through press row at the same time as a chorus of boos filled the MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas, "that guy who did this" might not have been the judges. According to a conspiracy theory that had been floated and workshopped and all but perfected in the two minutes it took to walk from the arena to an adjacent banquet room for the post-fight press conference, "that guy" was Pacquiao’s promoter, Top Rank CEO Bob Arum.

This sounds far-fetched — and it is — but not much more far-fetched than the possibility that three professional judges who also happen to be human beings with eyeballs connected to optic nerves connected to non-lobotomized brains could watch that fight and believe that Bradley won. Or that it was even just a close victory for Pacquiao. There didn’t seem to be a single reporter on press row who gave the fight to Bradley, and if there was, he or she must have been too ashamed to admit it. I overheard HBO boxing analyst Max Kellerman saying he scored it eight rounds to four for Pacquiao, and that he thought doing so was being generous to Bradley. Ten rounds to two, nine to three, and even 11 to one in favor of Pacquiao were more common spreads among journalists who covered the fight. So when people tried to understand why Pacquiao lost a fight where he landed 82 more power punches than Bradley and 12 more jabs while connecting on a much higher percentage of his blows, it’s no surprise that foul play came immediately to mind. Anyone who searched for a rational explanation for this result was bound to come up empty. After that, what’s left but whatever cloak-and-dagger machinations you care to imagine in a sport controlled by a handful of powerful promoters with varying agendas and overseen by a patchwork of ineffectual state athletic commissions?

In the week before the fight, separate stories in the Philippine Daily Inquirer likened the fight-ready Manny Pacquiao to a ninja, an eagle, and a Lamborghini. When he exchanged combinations with Bradley in the middle rounds of their bout Saturday, those comparisons actually didn’t seem so overheated. In rounds four, five, and six, when Pacquiao staggered Bradley with flurries of hooks, uppercuts, and overhand lefts, you might have been able to convince me that Pacquiao was part sports car, part bird of prey, and part shinobi assassin. It started late in the fourth, when Pacquiao fought off the ropes and landed a thudding, overhand shot that didn’t land clean on Bradley’s chin or cheek or nose, but struck him just beneath the ear with such force that it knocked him off balance. From there, Pacquiao unleashed a fusillade of punches while bounding from side to side around Bradley. The combination of glancing blows and a flush right cross to the chin sent Bradley stumbling back toward the center of the ring, where he sprained his ankle trying to recover his balance. Pacquiao kept the pressure on Bradley, who survived by holding Pacquiao against the ropes and refusing to let go until referee Robert Byrd forcibly pried the fighters apart. Bradley was wobbled and hurt in similar exchanges in the fifth and sixth as well, and he dazedly lurched back to his corner after each of those rounds.

The fighters traded combinations at other points in the match, but the most meaningful punches in the fight landed in those violent middle rounds. And nearly all of them were landed by Pacquiao. Late in the fight, Bradley seemed to shift to a far more defensive strategy. He had tried to pick his spots and counterpunch throughout the fight, but after Pacquiao hurt him, Bradley’s game plan looked more like a full-scale retreat. Bradley galloped in circles around the ring while Pacquiao smacked his gloves together in frustration and chased him. There’s no telling how much Bradley’s injured ankles limited him in this fight, but they certainly didn’t prevent him from running. It looked like survival mode, like Bradley just wanted to go the distance. On occasion, Bradley would spring forward and throw a jab or a one-two combination to little effect, then leap out of range. And even with Bradley doing everything he could to avoid going toe-to-toe with Pacquiao, Manny still managed to land a handful of clean power shots that seemed significant enough to win rounds. Pacquiao did appear to take stretches off late in the fight — he didn’t pursue Bradley like he was hell-bent on knocking him out. But Bradley is not slow and I’m not quite sure how Pacquiao could successfully cut the ring off against a quick, agile opponent whose primary concern seemed to be escaping further harm. And besides, by the time the late rounds began it was hard to imagine that anyone in the building really thought Pacquiao needed to catch Bradley, since he had dominated the fight until then. When the final bell rang, I scanned the crowd for Filipino senators and celebrities, and saw Jeremy Renner — The Bourne Legacy was shot in Manila — sitting among them. There wasn’t a glimmer of concern in their faces, because Pacquiao had obviously won. Then Bradley was declared champion.

I was so confused by the decision that after the fight, I went back to my room and bought the pay-per-view replay (same $55 price tag as the live fight!) from Top Rank’s website. Brian Kenny was calling the fight for Top Rank, and he was more pro-Bradley than anyone I had spoken to at the fight. When I watched Buffer announce the decision again, this time on the screen of my laptop, I heard Kenny explain: "That was won fair and square, in the ring." The point, I guess, was that Bradley, by moving away from Pacquiao and throwing 398 jabs into the air, had somehow outboxed Pacquiao.

But I have seen Manny Pacquiao get outboxed — Juan Manuel Marquez did it in many of the 36 rounds he’s spent in the ring with Pacquiao, although it was never quite enough to earn Marquez a decision. And Bradley’s performance Saturday night hardly resembled the way Marquez fought in any of his three fights with Pacquiao. For starters, Marquez never ran. He stood a step out of Pacquiao’s range, waited for him to attack, and timed his shots to interrupt Pacquiao’s barrage. This is a perilous way to fight a boxer as fast, powerful, and unpredictable as Pacquiao, and that’s probably why Marquez was knocked down four times in their trilogy. But even though Marquez ate his fair share of Pacquiao leather, his ability to weather Manny’s storm and land his own precise counterpunches allowed him to do something Bradley never did — hurt Pacquiao back. That’s why Marquez is still considered Pacquiao’s toughest opponent and Bradley is just the beneficiary of boxing’s most recent travesty.

The disputed decisions in Pacquiao’s last two fights — a November victory against Marquez and Saturday’s loss to Bradley — lead to a suspicious place for the conspiracy theorist set of boxing fans (which, I presume, is the majority of them). Why would boxing’s powers that be deny Marquez the victory that many believe he deserved in November, then turn around and rob Manny with Saturday’s decision?

Here’s the conspiracy theory that rippled through the boxing media Saturday night. We’re never going to know if it’s true, and it might be complete hokum. But damn, does it make sense in all the right twisted, paranoiac ways.

Top Rank promotes Manny Pacquiao. He is the second most bankable fighter in boxing, after Floyd Mayweather. But because Pacquiao has fought more frequently than Floyd over the past five years, he has generated more overall money than Mayweather. Pacquiao-Marquez III generated $11.6 million in ticket sales and 1.4 million pay-per-view buys. The Bradley fight didn’t even sell out the MGM Grand Garden Arena, and it’s expected to do lower pay-per-view numbers — largely because Bradley doesn’t have much of a following — but when all the revenue is added up for Saturday’s fight, Pacquiao will have once again made Top Rank many millions of dollars.

In recent years, Arum and Top Rank have become somewhat notorious for their reluctance to make big fights with boxers promoted by other companies. Part of this is due to bad blood between Top Rank and the sport’s other leading promotional company, Oscar De La Hoya’s Golden Boy Productions. But rivalries aside, business is always better for Top Rank when they schedule a pay-per-view fight between two Top Rank stars. That way, once the fighters receive their guaranteed purses and negotiated percentages of the TV revenue, the rest of the pie goes straight to Top Rank. If Top Rank were to stage a fight in conjunction with Golden Boy or another major promoter, the company’s earnings would essentially be cut in half. This is believed to be why Bradley was never considered a likely opponent for Pacquiao until last year, when he left his former promoter and signed with Top Rank. It’s also one of the reasons why a fight between Manny Pacquiao and Floyd Mayweather has never been made. Even though Mayweather-Pacquiao would create the biggest payday in boxing history, Top Rank and Mayweather’s team would have to split that payday and the resulting profits might not exceed what Top Rank can make by pitting Pacquiao against an in-house fighter, even if the opponent is nowhere near as talented or famous as Mayweather.

Top Rank prefers to match Pacquiao with its own fighters, but Pacquiao has beaten nearly every credible foe (Miguel Cotto, Joshua Clottey, Antonio Margarito, Shane Mosley, and Marquez were all with the company when they fought Pacquiao) in Top Rank’s stable in recent years. According to the conspiracy theory, Pacquiao’s loss to Bradley solved the problem of finding Manny a November opponent. Instead of force-feeding the public a fourth Marquez fight, Top Rank can stage the Pacquiao-Bradley rematch, and they can reasonably expect the fight to generate greater profits than the first one, since Bradley’s public profile will grow and boxing fans will be keen to watch Pacquiao attempt to set the record straight with a knockout. Additionally, boxing trainer and analyst Teddy Atlas has suggested that with Pacquiao’s contract with Top Rank ending in 2013, the fighter may choose to leave the company next year. This would allow Pacquiao to negotiate his own promotional deals like Mayweather does. By doing so, Pacquiao would presumably be able to claim a much fatter slice of the earnings pie from his fights. According to this tributary of the conspiracy theory, Saturday night may have been Top Rank’s way of sending a message to Pacquiao: If you choose to leave next year, you might be doing so with two fresh losses on your record, and Mayweather might decide he no longer has to prove that he can beat you.

Are the powers that be and their backstage plots real? Your guess is as good as mine, but imagining them is one of the secondary joys of boxing fandom. Trying to understand the promoters’ motives and anticipate their next moves is almost as much fun as watching Pacquiao overwhelm an opponent or Marquez pick apart a fighter one sharp counter at a time.

I think that’s why, when Bob Arum stood behind a podium and faced the press after Saturday’s fight, he was given a surprisingly warm reception. These were, after all, the same cynics who had just been muttering about how Arum was probably to blame for the Bradley decision. But boxing writers and hard-core fans understand that the game behind the scenes is as important as the sport inside the ring, and it was hard not to admire the way Arum played the moment at the press conference.

"I’ve never been as ashamed of the sport of boxing as I am tonight," were the first words out of Arum’s mouth. He defused the anger in the room by calling the Bradley decision one of the worst he’s ever seen, comparing it to other controversial decisions like Pacquiao-Marquez III. Arum said that this result was far worse — "unfathomable" — and admitted that as angry as he was in the moment, he stood to "make a lot of money off the rematch." He mixed righteous indignation and candid talk about business with a Yiddish-peppered rant about how old, incompetent judges make everyone feel like schmucks, "and nobody likes to feel like a schmuck." The room was laughing at his sarcasm, even though moments before, many of the people who were now enjoying Arum’s irascible charm had been kvetching about how he must have masterminded the entire debacle. And that’s really the beauty of Bob Arum, the man who famously once told reporters, "Yesterday I was lying; today I’m telling the truth." Twice a year, it seems like Arum is involved with something that makes everyone who cares about boxing feel like a schmuck, and every single schmuck among us just keeps coming back for more.

[SpacegrassParticipant]

Boxing isn’t a sport anymore , it’s entertainment plain and simple.  With fights being decided before the outcome is properly decided in the ring.  Might as well be the new pro wrestling in my eyes , it has become a niche sport and it will take a couple of seriously polarizing heavyweights going at it for a decade to bring it back from it’s grave.

[bloodshyParticipant]

First, this thread already happened here once.

Second, since we’re talking about it again … this was truly the biggest non-athlete failure I have ever seen in sports.  Ever.  This was a more obvious scam than the French/Russian olympic judges that admitted to cheating.  This fight caused me to no longer be a boxing fan.  And I was rooting for Bradley.

[akhan786Participant]

Yes this has already been discussed but I wasn’t sure everyone had read about the complicated conspiracy behind it.

Plus it’s a good read.

[IndianaBasketballParticipant]

There’s definitely something fishy going on… Manny was robbed.

This probably isn’t the most popular thing to say at this point, but does anybody actually think Manny can beat Mayweather? I mean, Manny beat Bradley, but Bradley held his own (at times outboxing Manny IMO)… And it turns out that he was fighting with torn ligaments in his ankle.

I can’t see Manny beating Mayweather… He’s a ten times better boxer.

 

[GrandmamaParticipant]

// Nah Pacquiao wouldn’t beat Mayweather. It would be a good fight, but Mayweather is the best pound for pound boxer in the world and has been for years. This coming from someone who hates Mayweather.

[surveParticipant]

Manny can beat Floyd….but IMO, I would pick Floyd everytime.  I have said this for years now.  Floyd is a defensive mastermind, the best of his era….but he mixes it with superb offense and the ability to make adjustments on the fly.  He doesnt watch tape…because he doesnt get stuck on a particular style that a guy may have…thus that oppenent coming in with slight changes in style.  For instance, in the first Tyson vs Holyfield fight….Holyfield watched tape of Tyson and noticed that EVERYTIME Mike dipped, he throws the left hook.  That almost got him KOed with the first punch because Mike dipped and threw a right hook that caught and wobbled him.

The way to beat Floyd is to overtax his defense.  Meaning you have to throw so many punches that it doesnt give him time to think.  Floyd is a master chameleon….he never fights his next opponent as he did the last.  He makes adjustments to the style as he goes.  Against slower fighters, he throws the jab to the body to keep them off balance, then pot-shots them.  Against Zab Judah, two things were absent….the jab to the body that he nearly always uses and the shoulder roll defense.  Why?  Zab is a very fast southpaw and if Floyd threw the jab to the body, he would risk Zab coming over the top with a counter.  Zab is also too fast, even faster than Floyd, to use the shoulder roll against….he tried it briefly and was stunned.   What Floyd knew was, Zab is a front runner (sort of like the Miami Heat…lol) and he just broke him down technically and mentally and the skills did the rest.

So, I would never pick Manny over Floyd, but can he beat him?  Yes, any fighter can be beaten, especially by a great one.

To this fight, as many of you know here, I am an avid fight fan and it is my favorite sport….but I recently stopped watching boxing after getting so disgusted with the first Bernard Hopkins vs Chad Dawson fight.  I wont go into why, but the politics is sickening.  I am not going to get on here and talk about how boxing and other professional sports are rigged….but they are and I will leave it at that.

I have been around the sport for a long time.  I never missed a great PPV attraction.  After not ordering any in a while and not watching boxing for a while, I said…ehhh….I will check this fight out because Bradley is a live dog.  I almost hit the sportsbook on this one in favor of Bradley…when the fight was over, glad I didnt…then the decision was announced…….wtf?

Ok, let me say, this has kinda happened before and I dont believe it was a fix….I dont even believe it was incompetent judging.  As Max Kellerman stated, he spoke with some very respected viewers ringside and they thought that Bradley won also.   You really cant say much in this instance because there wasnt a scorecard that was out of place.  Everyone had the same scores!  Two judges had it for Bradley and the other one had it for Pacquaio.

One of the judges, Duane Ford teaches other judges classes on "how to judge".   Two of these judges were very experienced.  This has happened before, in the De La Hoya vs Mosley rematch it happened, where most thought that De La Hoya won but a lot ringside felt that Mosley won.   I actually though Mosley lost but he was killing De La Hoya in the final rounds.  

What happened in that fight that was similar to Pacquaio vs Bradley was….there were some very close looking rounds if you may have been watching it from ringside.  Those are swing rounds, and a judge can swing them anyway they feel.  Bradley was pretty busy and Pacquiao was catching him a lot on the gloves.  Compubox is subjective, so you cant go totally by that.  I thought Bradley was winning some rounds, but watching on TV….I only gave him 4 rounds at the most.

Because boxing is judged, its not as definitive as a basketball or football game, its subjective based on the viewer.  Harold Lederman has been extremely biased before and as always Jim Lampley is towards the house fighter.  Watch the fight with the sound off without the biased commentary and see if you think the fight was a wash for one fighter or was it relatively close?

Everybody is making a big stink about this fight, and when I heard the winner announcement, I was shocked….but I didnt jump out of my chair because all the scores were the same, so I said obviously this wasnt a fix towards Bradley.  Also, to take some of the luster away from a possibly Mayweather fight would be really dumb.  On the flipside….maybe Arum (who has committed felonies by bribing sanctioning bodies for fighter ranking) knew that Mayweather wouldnt want to fight until next May anyway due to him not being released from prison sometime in Sept 12 or around there.  So lets do this match twice because the 2nd will be bigger than the first due to the controversy.  Thats some rigging, and would really take a lot to do…

After going over different theories, I thought of how we discussed here about conspiracy theories of the NBA lottery….and no matter what the theory, there is always rebuttal that makes it seem at least dismissable.

I dont trust pro sports.  This was bad for boxing on the surface, but now, more people will want to see the rematch.  If Pac KO’s Bradley the next time, people will say….we dont even count the first fight as a loss.  Then he can fight Mayweather and win, lose, or draw, ride away into the sunset.    Everyone will be happy.  That fight will gross $50 mil per fighter.  Pacman has already made $26 mil from this fight and Bradley $5 mil, with more to come once PPV buys are tallied.  Bradley will make more than twice that for the rematch….which I for one will not buy.

So what is bad for the sport and craft has actually become "good" in terms of the finance department.  I dont believe this fight was rigged, but then again….couldve been.  I believe the draft was rigged….then again, may not have been.

I for one have stopped watching as much sports and try not to get so excited and worked up about them anymore because there always seems to be some agenda somewhere.  Remember, "if it dont make dollars, it dont make sense".  

Now I will be looking forward to OKC vs Miami in the Finals.  There are a lot of thoughts running through my mind as far as agendas.  I have seen it before in the NBA.  I have seen it in college.   I wont go into that here, because it can always be dismissed as conspiracy theory…and therein lies the problem.   Things seemed simpler when I was a kid, and generations before me…but these sports have ALWAYS been business first…thats what we have to realize.  If there is integrity, you better believe there is a mix of corruption as well.  Whether its 50/50, 60/40, 80/20, or 90/10 is the question.

I had refrained about posting on this topic since the fight but since it has been brought up again, I felt as if I should get some things off my chest.  I am hoping for a great uninfluenced and unbiased NBA Finals.   I likely wont post much about the outcome and get into the Lebron vs KD debates.  I will focus on the talent and the integrity of the players….even if the integrity of the game is gone.  This is more than I can say for boxing…but not much more.

[invalidParticipant]

 i followed pacman thru his career and i can say he CAN beat mayweather. ofcourse not all the time, but if they fight instead of bradley, i will bet on manny.  like in basketball, great offense always win. but if he cannot take down floyd in 6 rounds it spells a lot of trouble. lol. that means mayweather can endure his speed and power and take his turn on the later stage.

what happened on that night is a shhty plot, if manny and floyd fight, the loser is likely to retire if not both. they just want to milk pacman as more as possible before he stops fighting. after floyd and pacman is done so is boxing.  

id rather watch marquez/pacman go at it again instead of bradley..

[Ahkasi ClayParticipant]

Wow what a biased article. I agree i thought pac won, but even the announcers on the feed i watched thought bradley was very close on rounds. One even praising the judges for their scores.

[surveParticipant]

Yes, HBO commentators are known to be very biased.  I am not surprised the feed you watched had the commentators viewing the fight like the judges did.  As I said, I dont believe Bradley won, but if I were ringside, I probably wouldve saw it as a closer fight…but still doubt I would score for Bradley.  I will say again, this is not the first time the HBO crew has gone so overboard with biased commentary and scoring.  The judges saw it the same way virtually, the ringside observers saw it for Bradley as well.  The funny thing about the judges is, the least experienced judge was never the "lone wolf" judge on any of the rounds…meaning that she agreed with at least one of the other judges on each round.  Dont forget that many felt that Pac was the recipient of a gift decision in his last fight against Marquez.  HBO virtually had this fight as a shutout and it absolutely was not, thats where all the controversy arises from.  It doesnt always tell the story but if you look at the damage to both fighters facially, you really cant tell who won…but certainly Bradley doesnt look like he took the beating so many claim.

sorry if you didnt get it from my long post but the main idea is….in sports, the fans who are purists get the short end of the stick because we are not the targeted audience. When I was in the office today, of course there was a lot of chatter about this fight….from who? The casual fans. They are the ones who are interested in seeing the rematch…many of whom didnt see the fight on Saturday. As much as I would like to interject with my analytical breakdowns….its not worth it for me to get into those discussions….because the purist is usually the one who will come out sounding like a nut.

This is why conspiracy theories sound so wacky because of how the masses are trained to hear, see, and think. Conspiracy theories are pointless now because you cant tell whats really a fix and whats not. Its too intricate….that is if we are not imagining things and our eyes truly decieve us. Places like this forum is where true integrity can be found, and a place where sports purists can find some solace. I have found it here.

No matter what is discussed here, I urge everyone to take these games for what they are, and thats entertainment. While I look forward to many more interesting discussions here….I just want to say dont get too worked up over the politics and the hoopla…just behold and witness the greatness of the players that we have the opportunity of watching in this years NBA Finals.

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