By Bart Barry
A few weeks back I did something I rarely do: I made plans to attend a Las Vegas fight, Timothy Bradley versus Manny Pacquiao on April 12, without having much of an idea why. What follows, then, is an effort to understand better my interest in this event.
If there was a hint of the overrated about Pacquiao going into his first match with Bradley in June 2012 at MGM Grand, a hint that became still more than a clue six months later as Pacquiao laid on the same blue mat, facedown and motionless, there is a similar if somewhat more subtle hint of the overrated about Bradley as we head to April 2014. I believed in his third match with Juan Manuel Marquez, Pacquiao was credited with punches that didn’t land, footwork that didn’t exist, and power that didn’t remain. Is that why I scored close rounds for Bradley in June 2012? Sure, yes, guilty.
In retrospect, that match might have gone either way but should have gone to no man widely. And yet. Spurred by an irresponsibly lopsided broadcast, complete with an unofficial scorecard that told few truths, a large number of persons to this day think the decision for Bradley was farcical. It was not.
While Manny Pacquiao looked considerably better in his final conscious rounds with Marquez six months later, able to land punches more cleanly, certainly, than he’d been able to land them on Bradley in June or Marquez in any of the 35 rounds that followed his three-knockdown blitz of the Mexican master way back in 2004, the probability is that Marquez was more open to be punched because Marquez – perceiving with a preternatural predatory precision – took note of Pacquiao’s eroded reflexes, married those to a powerfully newfound belief in his illgotten new physique, and looked to make offensive ploys he’d not have dared pursue in their 2008 rematch. It’s not that Pacquiao was suddenly a much better fighter for a few rounds in December 2012 than he’d been in June or the previous December – his defense hadn’t improved a jot, as evidenced by gloves unnaturally folded beneath his body in perfect serenity at the end of round 6 – just that Marquez was emboldened by how much less Pacquiao was then than the guy he’d spend 108 minutes being punched by in bygone fights.
There is an argument to be made Pacquiao’s reflexes dulled sometime during his Silly Season, the two-year stretch, 2009-2011, between his match with Miguel Cotto and his third fight with Marquez. The reduced competition did this, yes, along with an improved risk-to-reward ratio and the decadence that wrought, but there may have been, too, the sockdolagers Margarito put on his body and, perhaps most to the point, the brutality of Pacquiao’s sparring with campmate Ruslan Provodnikov.
“Siberian Rocky” is in a different class; veteran writers will describe the way a world champion sounds on handpads as opposed to a career challenger, but much of that is show, and none tells of a chin. The sound of Provodnikov’s fists on Mike Alvarado’s body in October, though, was in a different class and far more telling than handpad tricks because, well, Provodnikov had to throw those punches under the rational assumption a world titlist might endeavor to punch him at the exact same moment, and assumptions like that scumble one’s commitment.
Provodnikov is relevant, here, because he is the one man, apart from Marquez, whom Pacquiao and Bradley have in common, and while Marquez iced Pacquiao in a special sort of way, one would almost prefer the cutting of the lights to what excruciating happenings must compose rounds opposite Provodnikov on a blue mat. Almost always the term “most feared” is a marketing slogan applied by someone who has never fought to a client who never makes big fights, but Provodnikov should be called most feared by any and all; he is the man who shortens careers and changes men, compromising the very fabric of their identities, and if Timothy Bradley never again sells it out to fight like a noble fool, Provodnikov will be the reason why.
To beat Pacquiao again, Bradley will not need to engage at nearly the maniacal level he engaged Provodnikov. Las Vegas judges are already sympathetic to Bradley, as evidenced by his winning more October rounds against Marquez in Las Vegas than he deserved, and they will look thrice as closely at how many of Pacquiao’s actual punches actually land in an actually effective way this time, thrice as closely as HBO’s broadcast crew did the first time the two men fought.
Another note about that, and the effect it takes: I was a member of boxing’s laity in 1999 when Felix Trinidad decisioned Oscar De La Hoya in what I remembered from that time to be perhaps the most egregious superfight robbery since Julio Cesar Chavez’s 1993 draw with Pernell Whitaker. Apropos of a retrospective I worked on last week for a magazine piece timed to coincide with Trinidad’s June induction in the IBHOF, I reviewed the fight and was flabbergasted by the bias of its commentary – a piece of work that comprised one veteran broadcaster calling every Trinidad right cross “another left hook by Oscar!”, and a former heavyweight world champion finding himself so enamored of De La Hoya’s jab that he eschewed speaking Trinidad’s name altogether in the match’s opening half. One’s sense of the match 15 years later is that a draw was fair, but if not a draw then tie-goes-to-the-puncher, and De La Hoya’s skittering flight from Trinidad in the final six minutes subverted his claims on any lasting dissent. So different was the tone of that match in Puerto Ricans’ eyes that in December, at the press conference announcing Tito’s selection to the Hall, Trinidad was asked sincerely if he thought De La Hoya even belonged there (Trinidad stated empathically that he did).
The cost to attend superfights anymore is prohibitive, I know – even for credentialed media – so do not consider this a remedy for bias’ woes, but I will be at MGM Grand on April 12 because I’m interested in the descent of Pacquiao’s career and the prime of Bradley’s, and frankly, I do not trust what I see on pay-per-view broadcasts.
Bart Barry can be reached via bart.barrys.email (at) gmail.com
