Good Fight, Terrible Decision

Written twenty minutes after scores for Pacquiao/Bradley were announced.

 
I'm sitting in a hotel room while my dad watches Dragon's Den on TV.

 

It's been quite a day. He made the trip from Edmonton down to Calgary and from there, up to Banff and then back to Calgary to catch the Manny Pacquiao/Tim Bradley fight.

 

Going by what I had seen on 24/7, I had expected Bradley to outbox and out-hustle Pacquiao.

 

We got just the opposite. Like everyone else inside the Boston Pizza, we were drawn into the atmosphere around us.

 

"I'm picking Bradley, but I'm gonna cheer for both of them," I told him. Besides, I didn't want to be associated with the group of jackasses who were cheering for Bradley just to piss off the mostly Filipino audience.

 

Because of the hours I work, I mostly never get to see a fight on PPV. However since my schedule changed, I was finally able to see a fight as it was happening which usually gets me really hyper and shouting advice at the TV that will go unheard by the combatants. And since there were fifty or so people around me with the same attitude.

 

While I did give Bradley the first round, from there on it was all Manny Pacquiao. For all the talk about him possibly slowing down, having trouble in camp, you would thought that he'd had the best training camp in the history of boxing just by watching him.

 

After each round I would write down who won the round. By the time the 12 came, I had Pacquiao winning every round except the first and last round.

 

"Pacquiao should try and knock him out," I told my dad as the final round started. "It's the only way to make an amazing night even better."
Bradley, to his credit, fought his heart out unlike other Pacquiao opponents who were merely content to go the whole twelve rounds, tried his hardest to turn the fight his way.

 

We cheered and hollered when the fight ended and awaited the decision, knowing the obvious: Manny Pacquiao had given Timothy Bradley his first professional defeat.

 

Then Michael Buffer opened his mouth.

 

I knew when he announced that one judge had scored it 115-113 for Pacquiao, I stopped for a second.

No way, I thought. Just no way.

 

Then the score for Bradley came in...and then the final card came in for Bradley.

 

I erupted with profanity at the TV screen and then entered a kind of shock. I wasn't being emotional and crying for Pacquiao but I was stunned that a fight that seemed so one sided was scored as anything but.

 

You could tell that everyone in that arena knew who had won. Bradley's wife had a look on her face before the decision of disappointment. Afterwards she had her head hung, almost in shame as if to say, "Wow, was my man lucky the judges sucked tonight!"

 

As we walked to the car, my old man and I were still discussing the fight. We both agreed that at most, you could give Bradley three rounds and that's if you were in a generous mood.

 

So where do we go from here? Well, it looks like that bogus poster Bradley made promoting a rematch will be put to good use after all. Sometime in November a fight will probably happen, which will be bigger and make all those involved a lot more money. Either way, I think we can safely assume that a fight between Floyd Mayweather and Manny Pacquiao will never EVER (Apologies to Chris Jericho) happen due to the fact that Floyd can brush aside Pacquiao by saying, "Well, I scored the fight for Bradley."

Either way, the corruption in this sport is killing one of the few things that I love on this planet.

 

A few more decisions like this, and I might start following curling.

Andrew Schweitzer is a contributing writer to boxing4free.com. When not writing or discussing the sweet science, Andrew can be found at www.SchweitzerMan.blogspot.com where he rants on stuff you may not care about, but will enjoy nonetheless.
Twitter: @SchweitzerMan