Timothy Bradley upsets Manny Pacquiao on split decision

LAS VEGAS – Newly crowned WBO welterweight champion Timothy Bradley showed upat the postfight press conference Saturday night in a wheelchair, saying he thinks he broke one ankle as early as the second round and perhaps sprained the other.

Which makes what happened in his title fight against Manny Pacquiao even more unbelievable.

In a split decision that stunned most everyone in the arena, even many of his supporters, Bradley defeated Pacquiao to take the belt of the Filipino fighter and congressman and hand him his first loss since 2005. And it sets up a rematch, likely on November 10, and likely in Las Vegas again.

Bradley remained undefeated, improving his record to 29-0, with 12 KOs. Pacquiao fell to 54-4-2, with 38 KOs, suffering his first loss since 2005, when he lost to Mexico's Erik Morales.

"Me and my team, we did it, we shocked the world like I said we would," Bradley proclaimed. "I heard the boos at the end of the night, which is OK.

"We definitely need to do this again in November, and let's make it more decisive."

Virtually every reporter at ringside had scored it clearly for Pacquiao. HBO's resident judge Harold Lederman scored it 119-109 in favor of Pacquiao. In an informal survey of boxing writers, all had Pacquiao comfortably ahead.

Yet, two of the three ringside judges, CJ Ross and Duane Ford, scored it in Bradley's favor 115-113, while Jerry Roth favored Pacquiao by the same score.

Those in the capacity pro-Pacquiao crowd at The MGM Grand Garden Arena voiced their disapproval by raining down boos, even as HBO's Max Kellerman tried to interview the fighters in the ring afterward.

"It's not Tim's fault the judges gave him the decision," said Joel Diaz, Bradley's trainer. "All he did was get in there and fight."

The CompuBox punch count favored Pacquiao by a wide margin. CompuBox had Pacquiao connecting on 253 total punches – nearly 100 more than Bradley's 159. Pacquiao also landed 190 power punches to Bradley's 108.

"I did my best tonight, but my best wasn't good enough," said Pacquiao, who, according to Top Rank promoter Bob Arum, congratulated both Bradley and his father, Tim Sr., afterward and told them Bradley will make a great champion.

"Tonight, he never hurt me. I don't know what happened."

Bradley, asked if he was confident after the final bell that he won, didn't hesitate.

"Yeah, I told you I can," he said. "I was going into the last round and my corner was telling me I had to win the last couple of rounds to win the fight.

"Plain and simple. My corner felt like I was winning the fight, I was controlling the action. Manny fought in spurts, regardless of the punch stats. He missed a lot of shots, and a lot of shots everyone thought he was hitting me with. And he wasn't touching me. Look at my face. I'm still pretty clean."

Arum, the fight's promoter, came over to media row after the decision and said he had scored it 10 rounds to 2 for Pacquiao, and said even Bradley's manager, Cameron Dunkin, had it 8-4 for Pacquiao."We'll make a lot of money on the rematch, but this is (expletive) nuts. People don't even know what they're watching anymore. They're trying to kill boxing," the 80-year-old Arum said. "I don't think anything was happening here except these people don't know how to score. They really don't."

He said later that the "outcry worldwide, about this decision, will not be good for boxing."

Arum went on to say the decision was "not disgraceful, but ridiculous."

But he added that "The one thing I refuse to believe is that anything 'funny' is going on here. Betting, or anything like that. I don't believe it."

Arum did say he thought at least two of the judges were around his age (80) and said he speaks from experience when he says that's too old to be judging fights because their attention spans as they get older are not as good as they once were.

Diaz said after Bradley hurt his left ankle in the second round. he gave his fighter two options – either stop the fight immediately or continue. Bradley chose to soldier on.

He took a lot of punches, despite what his trainer said, and said he was hurt a couple times by Pacquiao's straight left hands.

"I didn't go down," Bradley said. "Most of his opponents go down or get hurt. I got hurt once in there where he came with a barrage of punches, but hey, I survived."

Pacquiao said he would have no problem agreeing to a rematch.

"No doubt," he said, adding that he would prefer to have the rematch in Las Vegas.

For Pacquiao, it was his first fight since his religious rebirth. After narrowly defeating Juan Manuel Marquez in November in a fight many in the media felt Marquez had won, Pacquiao said he gave up his vices and turned to the Bible.

He sold his casino in Manila, as well as his vast cockfighting operation. He said he had stopped drinking and womanizing.

Those closest to Pacquiao, 33, praised the first-term Filipino congressman for growing much closer to his wife and four children. Pacquiao even began to do daily Bible study with his wife, Jinkee, and others. Those in his entourage who disapproved of his conversion soon were gone.

This time, Jinkee and their children accompanied Pacquiao to the postfight press conference for the first time in recent memory.

Perhaps as a bad omen Saturday night, Pacquiao's favorite basketball team, the Boston Celtics, were eliminated by the Miami Heat from the NBA playoffs. Pacquiao watched the game before his fight.

Bradley earned the biggest payday of his career at $5 million, while Pacquiao was guaranteed $26 million, plus an upside from the pay-per-view revenue.

Bradley, 28, said all week he was going to shock the world. He even unveiled an oversized ticket during the final press conference that had Bradley-Pacquiao II written on it, a reference to a rematch after a Bradley victory. That was brought in during the postfight presser.

It appears that ticket is now worth holding on to.