Pacquiao vs Bradley: Why the Fight Is Guaranteed to Be an Underwhelming Bout

Either Manny Pacquiao or Timothy Bradley will be a winner on June 9, but boxing fans are sure to be losers when the fight ends. 

There just isn’t any way for this matchup to produce an exciting result.

Pacquiao is the more powerful, more experienced and better overall fighter. If Bradley is to take down the current World Boxing Organization Welterweight champion, he must execute a careful and calculated strategy.

Bradley is a crafty fighter who is very hard to hit. His defense will be his best attribute in this fight and he must play to that strength. 

If he has any shot at victory, he will need to be very patient and let Pacquiao come to him. He must wait and let PacMan tire himself out, then score points in the later rounds.

Bradley does not have great power and only 12 of his 28 wins came via a knockout. If he is going to take down the champ, it will have to be by a decision.

In order to outlast Pacquiao, Bradley will likely need help from his opponent. The Filipino fighter was clearly distracted going into his last fight against Juan Manuel Marquez and that led to a sub-par performance.

PacMan has come under attack recently in the media for comments about gay marriage, and Bradley must hope that this, or something else, will cause Pacquiao’s focus to be inadequate leading up to the fight.

For Bradley to win the fight, it will need to be by decision and will likely have to be the result of a poor showing by Pacquiao. This would undoubtedly be a disappointing scenario for anyone who pays a premium to watch the fight on pay-per-view. 

The other option for this fight is a win by Pacquiao. The most exciting result would obviously be a knockout, which is entirely possible.

Knockouts are always exciting, so this scenario would definitely cause a few minutes of buzz around the boxing world, but it would ultimately be a forgettable outcome.

Would Pacquiao knocking out a fighter who has yet to face any top-class competitors really be that memorable a moment?

There just isn’t any way for this fight to produce the type of headlines that boxing fans want to see. The best possible outcome for this bout is that it takes Pacquiao closer to a fight with Floyd Mayweather Jr.