Many fight fans, who are for the most part Pacquiao fans, have been expressing their disapproval for Timothy Bradley's recent pre-fight self-promotion and cocky persona.
Bradley has in the last several days said everything from he will destroy Manny Pacquiao, that his famous multi-award winning trainer of the year Freddie Roach isoverrated and even most cleverly made a cool rematch poster for "Timothy Bradley vs. Manny Pacquiao II" set for their rematch clause date in November which obviously implies that he already won the fight on June 9.
However, for those of us who have ever met Timothy Bradley before, we know this is not his personality. In fact, Bradley in his own words in an interview, stated how hedisliked Floyd Mayweather for doing the very same thing that he is now doing.
I first met Bradley at the Amir Khan vs. Marcos Maidana fight back in December 2010 and asked him how he felt and even a prediction on how he would do against Devon Alexander.
At that time, his fight with Alexander was the biggest fight of his career with both of the top elite champions at 140 pounds fighting to unify the titles and it was hyped to be one of the most meaningful fights in the sport of boxing.
Bradley was very humble and genuine and told me he feels good and that he does not know how his fight with Alexander will go down. What I gathered from him was that he was indeed confident that he would beat Alexander, but he did not want to come across as an arrogant person.
If you recall all of the HBO promos and pre-fight segments such as the Face Off with Max Kellerman tended to be biased in favor of Devon Alexander at the time. It appeared to me that HBO was desperate for their next big all American star to be born and they were intending for it to be Devon Alexander.
Even during the Face Off with Max Kellerman we see a trash talking Alexander and his trainer trying to play mind games and punk Bradley, but Bradley does not fire back.
Bradley either just takes it in and gets irked by the taunts from Alexander and his trainer or perhaps even HBO cut off or edited what Bradley had to say back to Alexander, to make it look like he was getting owned in the Face Off?
Either way, Bradley did not fight fire with fire and trash talk Alexander back and it seemed that HBO wanted to edit the Face Off with Max Kellerman in a way that showed Bradley as intimidated or insecure, but I was not buying it.
It seemed to me that Alexander was the insecure one laughing and trying to get inside Bradley's mind that day, but it did not work.
As we all know, come fight night Bradley was the better man inside the ring as he dominated Alexander onto a unanimous technical decision. Was Bradley just simply on a different level? Or was he just more hungry and willing to take it that night? I would argue it was a little bit of both.
Alexander was clearly outclassed and choked under the pressure of being in such a big, important fight.
Yes the fight turned out to be extremely boring and some may argue it was Bradley's headbutts that really won him the fight, but regardless, Alexander was not willing to prove he was better than Bradley that night.
So back to the now biggest fight of Bradley's career coming up on June 9 against the biggest name in boxing, Manny Pacquiao, why is it that Bradley is now suddenly a totally different person?
Why is it that he is pretty much doing the same things he stated that he hated about Floyd Mayweather? It is pretty clear that he has realized that this may be his one and only chance to make a name for himself and to market and promote himself as best as he can.
The truth of the matter is Manny Pacquiao is not good at hyping or promoting his fights. The Filipino Congressman is not a loud mouth or trash talker.
Those of us who have interviewed him and met him know that it can even be a bit of a nightmare to try to get Manny to open up and talk about his opponents or the real questions that the fans want to hear simply because Manny is extremely humble to the point where interviews often fall flat because journalists cannot get him to provide that interesting quote or soundbite.
Bradley knows this and knows its up to himself to promote the June 9 fight and get the people talking and interested in buying the pay-per-view.
We all saw what happened to a previous Pacquiao opponent named Joshua Clottey, who was dull in front of the cameras and even more dull inside the ring becoming a closed-up turtle not willing to dance with Manny, thus producing one of the most boring fights of that year.
Since then HBO has given Clottey the boot and since then he has only fought only once against a journeyman and not on a major network.
Maybe Bradley knows that this is his only time to shine and show the world who he is and if he does not, then his career will end up like Clottey's?
The night I met Bradley, he was just chilling with his wife and pretty much was just acting like he was just another fight fan. I saw him go up to Roy Jones, who was commentating that night for HBO, and ask for Roy's phone number and Roy gave it to him.
After the fights I was planning to get an interview and soundbites from Bradley and he told me he and his wife had to leave but he said he would do it at the next fight for sure and even told me which fights he will be at next and he did provide me the interview and soundbites as promised.
The footage of HBO's 24/7 of Bradley with his family and talking how all he needs is his family is the real Bradley, this Mayweather "Money May" impression that he is doing is just to sell the fight.
The real question is will the fighter known as "Desert Storm" continue to promote himself and his future self as the "Desert Storm" or as the "Money Storm"?
Article Source: Bleacher Report
