LAS VEGAS — Timothy Bradley’s trainer Joel Diaz spoke assertively during his roundtable discussion inside the MGM Grand media center Thursday morning: “I’m telling you right now,” Diaz said while flaring his arms like an Italian trying to punctuate an expression. “Tim Bradley is 100 percent ready mentally and physically to show that what happened June 12th is gonna be different this time.”
This Saturday on HBO pay-per-view, Team Bradley hopes for the same official result he got against Manny Pacquiao, but a different response from the first fight detractors.
The sensation on press row the night of June 12th was one of disbelief as ring announcer Michael Buffer read off the official scorecards, and that feeling carried into the pressroom as Top Rank chief Bob Arum stood at the podium irately demanding answers from the Las Vegas Athletic Commission. “I felt like I was hit by a truck on the face,” Diaz described. “That celebration minutes later became a funeral. That’s how it felt.”
Twenty-two months later, that unpleasant feeling still harbors inside the boxing world.
Diaz defended the first decision by partially blaming HBO’s ringside commentators: “Commentators influence the fans to see the fight they want to see. That’s what I think, Max Kellerman had a lot to do with that night.” But on press row the only commentators are internal, and are usually impartial. Ringside or couch-side, most believe Pacquiao won that night.
And when Saturday night is upon us, most believe Pacquiao will have the advantage if the rounds are close, and Team Bradley recognizes that. “We have to convincingly win every round. This is what I feel, and this is what this stage is set for,” Diaz explained. “There’s a lot of pressure on the judges due to the fact that the first one was according to them a controversy. Those judges are going to sit next to that ring with a weight on their back. If the rounds are close, the benefit of the doubt, there going to give them to Manny because they don’t want to end up in that same bullshit like the last time.”
The ringside judges will consist of Craig Metcalfe (Canada), Glenn Trowbridge (Las Vegas) and Michael Pernick (Florida). But according to Diaz, there is only one person he is focused on: “If you ask me honestly, I don’t know who the judges were, I don’t even know who the judges are for this fight. We just focus on one man, and that’s Manny Pacquiao. We want the best Manny Pacquiao to come, the most explosive, the vicious Manny Pacquiao.”
