(Manny Pacquiao poses with Bob Dylan, via; Timothy Bradley’s response to the hard rain that’s gonna fall)
Don’t follow boxing very often, but you want to know the gist of Saturday’s mega-fight between Manny Pacquiao and Tim Bradley? Follow boxing all the time, and want one place that rounds up all the links about the welterweight showdown you could ever want? This Ultimate Guide to the April 12 pay-per-view event is for you, no matter what kind of fan you are.
We begin, as usual, with our coverage of Pacquiao Bradley 2 here. I offered you a primer on the fight, the players, the landscape; the keys to the fight; and a final preview and prediction. Alex McClintock previewed the undercard, and rounded up the entire staff — Andrew Harrison, Jeff Pryor, Patrick Connor, Sam Sheppard, Matthew Swain and Alex and myself — for a discussion at a metaphorical roundtable. (Steve Zemach is filing reports from Las Vegas here and there, too.)
One of the best ways to get to know what a fighter is like in the ring is to check out the Greatest Hits clips from HBO below. They always leave out some important fights (like the first Erik Morales fight for Pacquiao, say, or the stuff Bradley did on Showtime earlier in his career), and for some reason this time they skipped the context-filled intros of each bout, so that’s a downgrade. For each man’s full career record, visit BoxRec. HBO has tons of other clips like some full fights on its YouTube site, HBO GO, On Demand, etc., including the series 24/7, which is a good way to get to know what a fighter is like outside the ring.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2e79kUlj0lg
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LpE0P-eP8xU
OK, you interested? Prepare to pay $70 for HD or $60 for standard for the HBO PPV card via your satellite or cable provider, or you can check it out online via Top Rank’s website for the same price. There don’t seem to be any discount packages available that I’ve seen, like via Tecate or providers offering a set number of months worth of free HBO, but sometimes people leave tips in the comments section.
The card’s start time is 9 p.m. ET. I wouldn’t expect Bradley-Pacquiao 2 before midnight, but it’s always safer to be in place at 11 p.m. just in case. If you’re interested in the weigh-in Friday, it’s at 6 p.m. HBO, Top Rank’s website and ESPN3/SportsCenter/ESPN.com.
Your mainstream media coverage highlights: Gordon Marino of The Wall Street Journal contemplates the question of Pacquiao’s hunger and the contrast with Bradley. The Associated Press comes at it from a similar angle, but is less philosophical, gives more of the back and forth from each side. USA Today’s Bob Velin examines how far Bradley has come emotionally since he first fought Pacquiao, and Kieran Mulvaney of Reuters, too, gets into the emotional approach of each man. Lance Pugmire of The Los Angeles Times digs into why Pacquiao hasn’t scored a knockout in a long while. Mitch Abrahamson of The New York Daily News zeroes in the physical aftereffects Bradley suffered in the Ruslan Provodnikov fight. ESPN’s Fight Credential is the usual all-encompassing resource. Kevin Mitchell of The Guardian weighs in on the issue of judging and refereeing. The New York Times sometimes doesn’t get around to a story on a big fight until Saturday morning if at all, and that’s where we are now. Cindy Boren at The Washington Post remains the only writer at the pub who touches the sport at the non-local level, so credit to her, but alas, it’s still usually in a cursory way.
We end, as we always do, with a bit of comedy. Here’s a brief cartoon via @boxingpls. Take us home:
(It refers to the nature of Bradley’s injury in the first fight, in case you don’t “get it”…)
