Pacquiao vs. Bradley: Why Boxing Fans Should Care About This Fight

Manny Pacquiao vs. Timothy Bradley may not be the fight that every boxing fan wants to see, but it is one that they need to watch.

It pits one of the great and established pugilists of this generation—Pac-Man—against an undefeated up-and-comer—Bradley—who wants nothing more than to pull off a miracle upset.

Another aspect that will make this bout so epic is the number of intriguing subplots that surround the event.

Pac’s trainer, Hall-of-Famer Freddie Roach, has been talking trash about Bradley, claiming that he reminds him of Ricky Hatton.

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“Bradley’s style of fighting fits Manny very well,” Roach told Malaya Business Insight in an overseas interview yesterday. “He fights like Hatton and look what happened to Hatton when he fought Manny. He went down for good just in the second round.”

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Hatton famously went down 2:59 into the second round after getting hit with a savage left hook when Pacquiao fought him in May of 2009.

Bradley’s trainer, Joel Diaz, had a harsh rebuttal for Roach according to Chris Robinson of BoxingScene.com

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“I feel he’s been an overrated trainer,” Diaz would say of Roach. “There’s only so much he can do. I just think that if Manny Pacquiao had landed in the United States with any other trainer, he would have made another trainer famous. Because it was Manny Pacquiao who made Freddie Roach famous, not Freddie Roach [who] made Manny Pacquiao famous.”

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This fight will also be a chance for Pacquiao to prove that his questionable decision over Juan Manuel Marquez was a fluke, not an indication that his career is on the decline.

If he is able to beat Bradley soundly, there will once again be a legitimate argument over who is the best fighter in the world, Floyd Mayweather or Pac-Man. It will silence all of his detractors and make them clamor for a superfight between those two men.

Should Bradley emerge victorious, he would solidify himself as the next great boxer and, along with Money Mayweather, become the pugilist to beat.

There is so much hinging on the outcome of this brawl that every single person that is even remotely interested in the sport will have to find a way to watch. The results set up future story lines for a long time to come.