Pacquiao vs Bradley Fight: Pac-Man's Legacy Untainted by Controversial Decision

Manny Pacquiao has a new and unexpected blemish on his resume, but don't expect that to change history's perception of the legendary fighter. 

From now until the end of time, Pacquiao's record will show that he lost to Timothy Bradley on Saturday, June 9, 2012. But any sane, rational and objective observer knows this simply isn't true.

Pacquiao dominated the first two-thirds of the fight, and although he faded slightly down the stretch, the final result still should have been a lopsided victory in favor of the champion.

He clearly did more damage than Bradley, staggering him throughout the fight with brutal straight left hands. He controlled the tempo, resting when he wanted and surging forward when he felt that was necessary.

Pacquiao had the advantage in every useful statistic, including total punches landed (253-159), power punches landed (190-109) and percentage of punches landed (34-19). He connected on more punches than Bradley in 10 of 12 rounds, and despite out-landing Bradley 27-11 in the seventh, all three judges gave that round to the challenger (via CompuBox).

When the final scorecards were announced, they read 115-113, 113-115, 115-113 in favor of Bradley. It was a shockingly horrible performance by the judges, and due to the widespread agreement in their incompetence, history won't remember this as a true loss for Pacquiao.

Over the course of his career, Pacquiao became the first eight-division world champion, racking up a ridiculous 54 wins. And although his loss column now reads "four" instead of "three", his place among the all-time greats hasn't changed.

Pacquiao is the greatest fighter of an era, one of the 10 or 15 best of all-time, and there's nothing some incompetent judges can do to change that.