Pacquiao can’t afford to cut corners

Tim Bradley has vowed to make his rematch with Manny Pacquiao relevant and truly conclusive.

At the same time, though, the defending WBO welterweight champion was not too clear on how he would put up a truly good fight.

The closest he came to baring part of his strategy was in suggesting an inborn deficiency in the knockout department.

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“Me, I’m a lighter puncher,” Bradley confided to Kevin Iole of Yahoo Sports.

“I think Pacquiao will feel he has the advantage in power,” he continued.

Bradley also admitted, Pacquiao “will try to take me out.”

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So how does he hope to put up a relevant fight, one that could provide a proper conclusion to their first blurred and inconclusive clash in June 2012?

Will he again resort to incessant bicycle riding, the way he did in Pacquiao-Bradley I?

“I will have to prepare a game plan that will make me eliminate the mistakes I made,” Bradley retorted.

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Still, there was nothing definite or clear that he would be more dangerous (to Pacquiao) than the judges who worked the first bout.

There was clearly an anomaly in the judging of that first encounter that saw Bradley’s hand being raised in triumph despite the clear superiority displayed by Pacquiao, mainly in the first six rounds.

“I’m a different kind of fighter,” Bradley reasoned. “I’ve been in the ring with him (Pacquiao) already and I know him the way he knows me.”

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If at all, Bradley has made it clear he would be more combative and engaging in the rematch.

Of course, there’s no questioning Bradley’s resiliency after he stayed on until the final bell, despite dislocating a foot in the early part of the first clash.

Bradley, criticized as inferior after the controversial split decision over Pacquiao, proceeded to acquit himself with back-to-back muscular victories—over Ruslan Provodnikov and Juan Manuel Marquez-last year.

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Maybe this need not be stated, but it’s incumbent on Pacquiao to put up sustained combativeness in the rematch.

He was observed to have faded when he struggled to conserve energy in the closing rounds of the first encounter.

Pacquiao’s controversial loss to Bradley was followed by a ghastly sixth-round lights-out downfall against Marquez on Dec. 8, 2012.

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Pacquiao did quit fighting for a year before scoring a magnificent redemptive victory over Brandon Rios in Macau last November.

There’s no denying Pacquiao had undergone extremely hard training for no less than three months for the Rios fight.

Time is, indeed, of the essence here.

But with only two months left in training for the rematch, prospects no longer look too rosy.

Pray Pacquiao doesn’t end up cutting corners the way he did in the first encounter against the unbeaten Timothy Bradley.