By Michael Collins: Top Rank president Bob Arum likes what he sees of undefeated Timothy Bradley after seeing him in a recent training session. Bradley looks completely cut up and muscular at the same time. He says he’s ready to face WBO welterweight champion Manny Pacquiao right now and take his title away from him. The two fighters will be meeting next month on June 9th at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, Nevada.
Arum said to RingTV “Tim Bradley is so confident that it’s scary. I mean, he’s absolutely 100 percent convinced that he’s winning the fight. We want a guy to go in with confidence, and so far, from what I’ve seen, this will be the greatest possible fight.”
I think it might be scary indeed for Arum because he doesn’t want his cash cow Pacquiao beaten by anyone, and a loss to Bradley would be a major blow for Arum and Pacquiao. It would finish any chances whatsoever of Pacquiao getting a reasonable financial cut in a fight against Mayweather. Arum and Pacquiao can’t continue to insist on getting a 50-50 deal if Pacquiao can’t get past Bradley. That would be a nonstarter in the negotiations with Mayweather. He’s not going to see Pacquiao as a charity case where he’s just going to give the guy a 50-50 deal because he feels sorry for him. Pacquiao has to beat Bradley, and he also has to beat him convincingly without any kind of controversy like in Pacquiao’s last fight against Juan Manuel Marquez. In addition, Pacquiao has to bring in big pay-per-view numbers as well as a large gate for him to be able to say with a straight face that he deserves a 50-50 deal with Mayweather.
Pacquiao’s trainer Freddie Roach is once again predicting another easy win for Pacquiao just like he always does. He thought Pacquiao would make easy work of Marquez in his last fight, and we saw how that turned out. Roach usually sees Pacquiao knocking out everybody he faces, it’s laughable that Roach continues to predict knockout wins for Pacquiao despite the fact that he hasn’t scored a knockout in three years since his 12th round TKO win over Miguel Cotto.
Roach said “I think Manny will beat Tim Bradley pretty easily.”
Yeah, right, Roach. Tell us another story.