Manny Pacquiao and Tim Bradley go to face each other Wednesday in California to launch the press tour of their April 12 bout in Las Vegas, but there’s already the promise of a mismatch in the area of merchandising.
Nobody in the prizefight backyard markets his fights more effectively than Bradley, the plain-punching fighter also known as Desert Storm.
Bradley, 30, has been known to reach hideous heights in a bid to sell unthinkable bouts. He tried to peddle tickets to a rematch during the press conference proper of his first meeting with Pacquiao in June 2012.
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Nobody fell for the comic ploy. But Bradley, definitely inferior to Pacquiao in that first duel, nevertheless got rewarded with an outrageous split decision win by dishonest and incompetent judges. At least, Bradley has stayed on the ground trying to market his worth for the April 12 rematch.
For starters, he tried to picture Pacquiao as a faded superstar, using the label “lackluster” for the Filipino superhero’s tentative finish against Brandon Rios in Macau last November.
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He may not have wholly believed the label he used, but yesterday, Bradley went as far as challenging Pacquiao to be fully combative and aggressive when they meet again at MGM Grand in Las Vegas in April.
Of course, Bradley has a point there, because the inappropriately prepared Pacquiao was forced to soft-pedal in the closing rounds of the first encounter in order to conserve energy.
Bradley also continued to pound on the perceived deterioration of Pacquiao.
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Wasn’t this the same view forwarded by the likes of Larry Merchant and Jim Lampley, who worked the Pacquiao-Rios bout? Singled out was Pacquiao’s lack of finishing-kick fierceness or, to put it bluntly, the absence of killer instinct. Pacquiao himself would not put up a defense.
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The closest he would do to offer an explanation was say he had thrown and landed his biggest punches against Rios.
“But I could just feel the old power and impact sail back through my arms,” Pacquiao was quoted as wondering.
He did not say it, but Rios must’ve been so tough and unshakeable as a concrete statue that would’ve needed a jackhammer to put the young, robust Mexican-American down.
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The story doesn’t end there. For the record, Rios was later penalized and slapped a ban by the China Professional Boxing Federation after he was discovered to have used performance enhancing drugs (PEDs) for the Pacquiao fight.
There’s an urgent message here for Tim Bradley. He needs to honestly evaluate if Rios would’ve survived in Macau last November with no illegal substance to prop him up at the height of Pacquiao’s fire-breathing might.