WBO welterweight champion, Tim Bradley, was full of praise for new trainer, Teddy Atlas, after last night’s stylish victory over Brandon Rios, going so far as to suggest a third fight with Manny Pacquiao, ‘could possibly be different’ with him in the corner.
In the build-up to this Rios fight, Bradley made much of the fact that Atlas had managed to reinvigorate him and totally change his approach, executing a perfect game-plan through studying past-footage and mistakes, and then correcting those errors in the gym.
“You don’t run, you stay there and you find angles,” Bradley said to fighthype.com about how they had approached Rios, going on to say that he hoped to further showcase the fruits of the Atlas hook-up in the biggest fights the division has to offer.
Sadly for Bradley, that will most likely exclude fighters on Al Haymon’s PBC roster, and leave promoter Bob Arum looking at the likes of British IBF champ, Kell Brook, or fellow Top Rank fighters, such as Pacquiao, who mentioned Bradley’s name last week as one of four possibles for his final fight in April.
After Pacquiao clearly avenged his controversial 2012 loss to Desert Storm in a 2014 rematch, it’s unclear how much interest there could be in a 3rd clash, although Bradley feels that if he was guided by Atlas for that fight, and studied the footage, they could come up with a plan to win it should Arum put it together.
“We haven’t done that yet [studied footage of the Pacquiao fights], we haven’t done that one yet but if we was getting ready for that then I’m sure he would,” Bradley said.
“[Teddy] would come with a masterful game-plan and we’d work on it day in, day out in camp and I don’t know, things could possibly be different.
“There should be big fights out there for me but we’ll just have to wait and see if I can get a dance partner,” he said conceding he wishes to mull things over with his team before considering any future fights above 147 lbs.
“I gotta talk to my trainer, talk to my team and whatever they wanna do,” he added, going on to say a March or April 2016 return would be ideal.
Twitter @undilutedpoison
