Manny Pacquiao Next Fight: Controversial Fight Demands Bradley Rematch

Nobody in the world knows what two of the three judges at the MGM Grand were thinking when they declared Timothy "Desert Storm" Bradley the winner over Manny Pacquiao via split decision, 115-113, 113-115, 115-113.

Something very terrible happened on the score cards in Las Vegas, Nev. on Saturday, as Pacquiao was definitively the better fighter all night, but was not awarded a victory. 

The fight was clearly a joke for Pacquiao, as he spent plenty of the match smiling at his opponent. Plenty of people thought that Manny wasn't the same fighter that he has always been, but he dispelled those ridiculous notions with a convincing victory over Bradley, despite his loss on the score card.

He methodically picked Bradley apart for most of the 12 rounds, and this decision should not have been hard for the ringside judges. Obviously, scoring a boxing match isn't easy, but this result should not have come about. Pacquiao should have easily won this fight, and should have tallied somewhere along the lines of 119-110. He was seriously that dominant.

Who knows if this is some kind of karma payback for Pacquiao's controversial victory over Juan Manuel Marquez, but this casts a huge shadow over boxing. Pacquiao registered more total punches, more power punches and a higher percentage of punches landed.

Pacquiao was on the top of his game once he reached the ring after a brief delay because he wanted to stretch his calves out on the treadmill. From the opening bell, he clobbered Bradley with left after left, dictating the pace far and away better than he did against Marquez.

It was so one-sided for the first few rounds, that the ringside commentators began to credit Bradley for small victories. Pacquiao, on the other hand, was relentless in pounding over Bradley. He hit 34 percent of his punches, while Bradley was sub-20 percent.

You will seldom come across a reaction like both ringside commentators had when it was announced that Bradley won. It was a feeling of sheer disbelief mixed with the underlying thought that something unfair had occurred at the hands of the judges.

It could have been that the boxing commission was afraid to award Pacquiao a victory in a second straight controversial decision, or it could just be that the rest of us missed something over the course of the 12 rounds. Pac-Man certainly didn't win every round, but it seemed that he was very close to it.

Just by watching the corner camera of Bradley, he looked defeated and dejected between rounds. He was hardly responsive to his trainer at times and it appeared that Pacquiao had broken him. Pacquiao, on the other hand, looked confident and clear-headed in the break between rounds, communicating back and forth with his trainer, Freddie Roach.

Either way, what's done is done. The unthinkable has been realized, as we saw Pacquiao suffer defeat for the first time in seven years tonight. We may never know what led the judges to their decision, but what we do know is the landscape of boxing has been altered after this result.

Among all the unknowns, what we do know is that there needs to be a rematch between these two fighters.