“Overall, I think that if Bradley does what he did the other day versus [Rios] ? if Bradley fights the way my son did, Pacquiao doesn’t have a chance. Move and hit him and move again.” — Floyd Mayweather, Sr.
“Bradley is a good fighter, but we all know who will win unless Bradley becomes a different fighter than what he has shown throughout his career.” — Nacho Beristain, Juan Manuel Marquez trainer
LAS VEGAS — There are dozens of subplots surrounding Saturday night’s fight between Manny Pacquiao and Timothy Bradley.
There is the electricity of Pacquiao’s return to the ring and the mystery of whether he will keep his word and retire when it’s over.
There is the long, lonely road that Bradley struggled through to reach a bout that has put him with one foot inside the door to history.
“People don’t know about my early career,” Bradley said the other day. “I fought in motels and hotels, in restaurants and lounges. It was “Take the ballroom, knock down a wall and you got an arena.’
“There was all of that, and our two earlier fights, and in my heart I know I can beat him, and I know if I don’t beat him now I never never, never will.”
There is Teddy Atlas, newly enlisted in Team Bradley to use his considerable talent as a trainer to eradicate the sins of the past and to draw the road map that will forever link his name with Pacquiao in future years when they talk about legendary giant killers.
There is all of the above. But what there isn’t here in this town, where word of mouth sets the pace, is a glut of hotel reservations and the traditional weekend rush to the local sports books. What there isn’t is “the buzz.”
Will Manny really call it quits?
Manny Pacquiao hints that his fight Saturday in Las Vegas against Tim Bradley might be his last after 22 years in the ring. But will he be able to walk away?
Jimmy Vaccaro, the dean of this town’s bookmakers says, ”We opened with Bradley as a 2?-to-1 underdog and now, three months later, it’s hanging dead at 2-1. On the Friday morning before Manny’s fight with [Floyd] Mayweather (Pacquiao’s most recent bout), we had already booked $500,000 worth of bets, with the fight still two nights away. Any fight that captures the buzz in this town should be at $150,000 at this stage.”
So what’s happening right now?
“Nothing. Absolutely nothing. We have an advance betting of $30,000 and, believe me, I don’t see an army of tourists with money on the way.”
But what Vegas will not reap in the casinos this week doesn’t mean we don’t have the prospect of an interesting fight looming on the horizon.
Inherent in the intrigue that surrounds it is something called ”The Marquez Effect.” Others call it the George Foreman Effect. The evidence of the danger either one poses is well known in this town. It’s the only place that either one has ever been seen or felt.
On Nov. 5, 1994, heavyweight champion Michael Moorer was miles ahead of George Foreman on the scorecards. Foreman’s right eye was closed. The vision in his left was disappearing. But Foreman had a plan. He knew that Moorer often grew overconfident in such situations.
When they went out for the Round 10, Atlas kept warning Moorer to move, to not pull straight back, to give Foreman angles. Then George hit him with a power jab and Moorer froze, barely moving his head. The right hand knocked him out.
Now fast forward to 2012. Same town, same situation. Except for a single knockdown by a right hand, Pacquiao was clearly winning, but Marquez had a plan. It was to wait for the moment when Pacquiao hung a jab and to come over the top with a right hand. He had done it twice earlier in the fight.
But now in, the sixth with Pacquiao ahead on all three cards, he rocked Marquez and pressed him for the kill. But Pacquiao lunged forward in his haste, hung his jab and Marquez did what he had trained for several months to do. A crushing right hand over the top knocked Pacquiao cold.
Bradley plans to make history
Do not think either lesson was lost on Atlas, whose advice Moorer ignored. The other day he said:
“You see Pacquiao’s explosive ability, his straight left hand, his right hook, his quickness, his surges, his hurricane of punches, but you don’t see the stuff that comes before the obvious, before the storm. I hope I can help my fighter see what comes before the obvious ? the warnings, the delays.
“Before a storm comes, the air gets sucked out of the place. You can feel it. Similarly, before an explosion of ability and punches comes from Manny, there’s something preliminary to that.”
And do not think that if the storm comes and Pacquiao gets overactive and focused only on ending it. That Marquez Factor has already been worked and reworked in Bradley’s training camp.
You know Bradley is aware that if Pacquiao gets careless, he will exploit it and his view of how Pacquiao will fight Saturday night, you can get a hint from something else he said:
“I am certain that he wants to ride off on a white horse in a carriage with his wife, riding off into the boardwalk, or wherever they’d go.”
Conversely, Pacquiao knows what happens when he is prone to a mistake like the one Marquez exploited. He says, ”Boxing is my passion. I love to fight.” But he can’t get lost in that moment the way he did against Marquez. For its part, the Bradley-Atlas axis will surely true to lure him into it.
It all makes for a fascinating chess match of ”what if?”
One thing we can all be grateful for: Because there was no buzz, there was no pre-fight posturing, no ersatz feuds. This fight will have to rely on the merits and the styles of both fighter.
What a relief.
