Pacquiao got robbed, no one running the sport cares, so no longer do young fans

One of the many times Pacquiao beat up Tim Bradley in their fight last Saturday. One in which Bradley only won on the judges scorecards.

I’ve tried to write this now for a few days, but never could without getting angry and using full caps at some point.  Manny Pacquiao got robbed.  There is no way that Timothy Bradley won the fight that took place Saturday at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas.  There is simply no way.  What has made it worse is that the judges are totally cool with being wrong.  So blatantly wrong that they are damaging the sport.

Their lack of caring about being correct is absolutely incredible.  Two judges are above the age of 70 and the other has historically been a contrarian judge.  One of the judges came out and said that he didn’t care what compubox said but that Bradley gave Pacquaio a lesson in boxing.  Are you kidding me?  The compubox stats show that Pacquiao landed almost a hundred more power punches than Bradley and in fewer punches.  Pacquiao was the more aggressive fighter while the fight seemingly was still close.  Besides the blatant lack of any logical awareness there were rounds scored in favor of Bradley when Bradley only landed nine punches while Pacquiao landed over twenty.

The incompetency is so huge in this group of judges that you almost can’t believe it in a favor of a conspiracy theory.  In order to accept the original explanation where the judges are just incompetent you have take incredible leaps in logic that any normal person can see are crazy.  It is much easier and simpler to believe that the judges were paid because people thought the fight would be much closer and therefore it would be a controversial decision rather than just flat out wrong.  One theory is the mob did it, because its always the mob.  The other is Arum fixed the fight in order to create an automatic next fight, possibly avoid Juan Manuel Marquez again, keep Pacquiao signed on, make a lot of money, and create an exciting rematch.  However, no one wants to see a rematch when they already saw Pacquaio show his vast superiority over Bradley.

I don’t want to fault Bradley too hard, the only thing you can say he did wrong was not be as good as Pacquiao (which is something he said to Arum after the fight was over but before the decision was announced).  He is obviously a very good fighter, is now a world champion, and will be probably be one of the fighters to carry the torch after Pacquiao and Mayweather retire in the coming years.

The biggest victim in this case is boxing.  For a younger generation who never saw a blown fight in their sport-aware lives they have just lost all faith.  More judges need to be added on top of fighters fighting more often and more big fights on network television.  The damages of Saturday are pretty much unfixable as people in college and high school were reminded of how corrupt the sport of boxing is.  It’s tough to be mainstream when your sport borders on being real and WWE.

The sport is now indefensible to people.  If people asked me in the past why to watch a fight I’d tell them the story of each fighter, the interesting matchups that come up with each fighter’s style, and the implications of results.  Now, I could say the same things, but deep down I know that some judges could screw it up for one of two reasons, incompetence or corruption.

Everyone knows that Pacquiao won the fight against Timothy Bradley, who is a great fighter in his own right.  To a new generation that boxing was kind of new to, now everyone knows that boxing cannot be trusted with their money or their interest anymore.

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