?I?m eating meat now,? said Timothy Bradley to the delight of butchers nationwide. ?I?m back on that meat??
?I don?t think I?ll have to kill her. Just slap that pretty face into hamburger meat, that?s all.??Sterling Hayden in ?The Killing? (1956)
No fighter fusses with his diet more than Timothy Bradley. He goes from carnivore to herbivore in the blink of an eye, with results that only he seems aware.
Bradley is fighting Manny Pacquiao on April 9. It will be their third fight. Bradley ?won? their first contest in June 2012 by split decision, and even appeared at their post-fight press conference in a wheelchair, for those who still harbor doubts about the victory. Their second fight was more clear-cut. Manny won that fight by UD, which perhaps explains why they?re fighting a third time.
But Bradley knows better than most fighters that you are what you eat. He has tried going the vegan route more than once, with presumably mixed results. To get the results he wants in the rubber match with Pacquiao, Bradley is cutting back on vegetables to make room for red meat.
?I?m eating meat now,? said Bradley to the delight of butchers nationwide. ?I?m back on that meat.?
Bradley believes the leg cramps he suffered in the first two Pacquiao fights were because of his diet.
?I?m eating fish and chicken and steak once a week,? he said, according to FightNews, ?so I think that has a lot to do with it. I just want to be able to fight this guy, Manny Pacquiao, with a great game plan without being injured at all and see what happens.?
If it ain?t broke, don?t fix it. That?s my motto. But Bradley seems determined to get it right and believes toying with his diet is the way to go.
But we?ve been down this road before. In 2014, in advance of his fight with Diego Chaves, Bradley ditched the vegan diet he?d been on since ?I fought Junior Witter? in 2008.
While training for Chaves, Bradley told Luis Sandoval of FightHype, ?Don?t look so fat no more. How do I look now, baby? Like a supermodel. Not no Abercrombie. More like a Jet model, baby. I switched it off for this camp. I?m experimenting. I started off doing this thing. I started off I was going to do the whole thing. I started off eating a little meat and stuff and I started to feel better. I still like my vegan. I have more energy when I?m a vegan. But I think like healing, like healing up from the training, I feel better. Sometime when I train, I have energy all day. And then I feel like a decrease in my stamina, so I?m just experimenting now.?
Bradley won the Chavez fight by the skin of his teeth. I?m not sure eating meat was much help.
But Manny Pacquiao is a different kettle of fish.
