Stats don’t lie: Manny Pacquiao dominates Adrien Broner in punches

MANILA, Philippines—Adrien Broner may have felt he won a lopsided fight and oppose the judges’ ruling, but he can’t ever argue with numbers.

Punch stats showed that Manny Pacquiao dominated in every category making Broner a human punching bag during their fight for the WBA World welterweight title at MGM Grand in Las Vegas.


The numbers showed that Pacquiao landed 112 of his 568 punches while Broner, who backpedaled and defended for most of the fight, connected on 50 while throwing a total of 295.

Pacquiao’s power punches stat line of 82-of-197 dwarfs Broner’s 39-of-180 in the same category and the American’s total punches.

The Filipino icon earned the nod of all three judges. Dave Moretti had it 117-11 while Glenn Feldman and Tim Cheatham both scored it 116-112.

Broner argued that Pacquiao “was missing” and that he had more clean hits. Well, numbers don’t think so.

source: sports.inquirer.net

Arum happy over modest ticket sales, PPV buys

LAS VEGAS—Top Rank chief Bob Arum said Friday that about 2,000 tickets are still up for sale a day before Manny Pacquiao and Timothy Bradley Jr. collide in the final chapter of their trilogy Saturday (Sunday in Manila) at MGM Grand here.

But Arum said he expects a lion’s share of those tickets to be gobbled up by weekend walk-in fans before the start of the pay-per-view card at 6 p.m. Pacific time.

But even if the rubber match between Pacquiao and Bradley doesn’t draw enough people to sell out the MGM Grand Garden Arena, Arum won’t mind. It wasn’t an easy promotion, even for an organization that just celebrated 50 years of producing fight cards.

For one, Pacquiao is coming off a long layoff that followed a lackadaisical duel with undefeated Floyd Mayweather Jr, which fell way short of the “Fight of the Century” hype. Pacquiao lost that match due to an injured shoulder.

Pacquiao also took a hit in his popularity after his comments on same-sex marriage.

That’s why Arum has set modest financial targets for this promotions.

“Whether [it’s a] sold out or 90 or 95% percent, we’re very happy with how the tickets went,” Arum told INQUIRER.net. Arum is also eyeing pay-per-view buys of 700,000, a far cry from the 4.4 million buys the Mayweather duel generated.

Arum is left to count whatever small victories Top Rank lands promotion-wise and one of them is the turnout at Friday’s weigh-in at MGM Grand.

“I think it’s very good [the reception]. The weigh-in was very good. People were well behaved,” Arum said.

source: sports.inquirer.net

Pacquiao tips scales at 145.5; Bradley pound heavier

LAS VEGAS— Manny Pacquiao tipped the scales at 145.5 pounds while Timothy Bradley came in a pound heavier ahead of their third showdown on Saturday at MGM Grand Garden Arena here.

Pacquiao, who was clad in all blue, was all smiles at the weigh-in Friday and promised anew to give the fans “what they want” on fight night.

“Expect more action in the ring. A better fight than the last two that we had,” Pacquiao said in an interview before a sizeable crowd at the arena.

Several Filipino fans were present to show their support for Pacman, even bringing Philippine flags and banners for the eight-division champion.

Bradley, chiseled as usual, was more subdued, even giving a shrug as he stepped on the scales. He immediately gobbled down a banana after putting his clothes back on.

The five-time world champion, who came with father Timothy Bradley Sr. and trainer Teddy Atlas, said he is taking the opportunity to prove he is the “top pound-per-pound” fighter in the world.

“This is another opportunity to show the fans that I can beat Manny Pacquiao,” Bradley said before thanking the fans.

Pacquiao and Bradley posed for photos with legendary boxing champion Roberto Duran while holding up the the special 12-karat diamond encrusted WBO belt, which is up for grabs in their April 9 bout.

Meanwhile, super middleweights Germany’s Arthur Abraham and Mexico’s Gilberto Ramirez both came in at 168 pounds for the co-main event.

Mexico’s Oscar Valdez, WBO’s no. 1 featherweight champ, tipped the scales at 125.5 pounds, half a pound lighter than Evgeny Gradovich from Russia.

Californian Jose Ramirez weighed in at 138 pounds while challenger Manny Perez from Colorado came in at 137.5.

source: sports.inquirer.net

Diaz submits McGregor in round 2 at UFC 196

Nate Diaz silenced Conor McGregor via rear naked choke in a major upset at UFC 196 on Sunday.

McGregor pretty much dominated Diaz in the majority of the fight, even opening a cut above the latter’s right eye.

Diaz then managed to put the brash Irish fighter in a submission, forcing the featherweight champion to tap out in the second round.

Their non-title fight started off with McGregor consistently teeing off on Diaz even until the second round.

Diaz managed to find an opening, using his length to land big strikes on the featherweight champion and giving him the opportunity to transition to the choke out.

source: sports.inquirer.net

Mayweather remains undefeated after UD win over Berto

Floyd Mayweather Jr. cemented his place among the pantheon of boxing greats with a unanimous decision over fellow American Andre Berto on Saturday (Sunday, PHL time) in what he has repeatedly said would be the final fight of his career.

Mayweather, 38, outboxed his younger opponent over the 12 rounds to retain his WBC and WBA welterweight titles and improve his perfect career record to 49-0, matching the benchmark set by former heavyweight champion Rocky Marciano.

Five-division world champion Mayweather dominated most of the exchanges in the MGM Grand Garden Arena with his lightning jabs and agile movement about the ring to finish ahead on all three judges' scorecards.

Berto, a 30-1 underdog against one of the best defensive fighters of all time, dropped to 30-4 as he suffered his fourth loss in his last seven fights.

Back in the ring for the first time since May when he beat Manny Pacquiao in a 'mega-fight' that became the richest bout in boxing, Mayweather landed 232 of 410 punches while Berto connected with just 83 of 495.

However, it was a welterweight showdown that failed to capture the public's imagination given Berto's relatively low profile globally and his mixed run of results over the past four years, and it was low on entertainment value on the night.

Barely five hours before the start, the MGM Grand box office said "a bunch of tickets" were still available for the arena in the price range between $300 and $1,500, but many of those were snapped up by fight time. - RAF, GMA News

source: gmanetwork.com

Las Vegas police on alert ahead of Pacquiao-Mayweather fight

LAS VEGAS, United States - Las Vegas authorities could take the rare step of barring traffic from the gambling hub's famous Strip this weekend as they brace the massive crowds expected to descend on Sin City for the Floyd Mayweather-Manny Pacquiao super fight.

The bout at the MGM is sold out and hotels are overflowing with guests as between 150,000 to 200,000 people are expected to pour into the desert city for the showdown being billed as the "Fight of the Century".

"We have handled events like this before where we had to shut down the Strip," Erik Newman, Deputy Fire Chief of Clark County Fire Department told Agence France-Presse. "What we are preparing for is the NBA all-star game in 2007."

Las Vegas officials are hoping to avoid a repeat of the chaotic February 2007 all-star game weekend which saw several people shot and around 400 people arrested.

Scattered fights broke out along The Strip and there were at least four shootings attributed to basketball fans.

That number includes three people who were injured outside the Minxx stripclub in a shooting that was connected to a group associated with National Football League player Adam "Pacman" Jones.

‘Whole world watching’

"The fight itself will be safe," said Newman. "Our big fear is the clubs and everything else. The problem is there are so many high-profile artists coming to town. We will have our hands full.

"We will have extra units out and metro (police) will have extra units out as well. We know the whole world will be watching."

Saturday's record-breaking spectacle, which will bring in $400 million to $500 million to the city's economy, has created its own set of security issues for law enforcement.

Larry Hadfield, spokesperson for the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police, said they will be beefing up their staffing in and around the MGM Grand Hotel and stepping up patrols along the main casino strip.

Hadfield told AFP they started planning for the blockbuster bout the moment it was announced in February.

"We are planning for the worst. We are getting pretty good at doing these big events. We have a vast number of resources," he said.

Besides the hotel security, police will also be working with the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security.

Crowd control inside the 16,000 seat MGM's Grand Garden Arena is also a concern.

The Grand Garden has been the scene of two recent post-fight stampedes, including one after the Mayweather-Marcos Maidana fight last May that injured 60 people. The stampede was caused when a partition that fell in the lobby area sounded like gunshots to the crowd that was exiting the arena.

Another less serious stampede happened in the same lobby when the crowd was leaving the Mayweather-Maidana rematch fight in September.

In September 1996, the MGM was the scene of an incident involving the late rapper Tupac Shakur. After the Mike Tyson-Bruce Seldon fight, Shakur was caught on a video camera beating a man in the hotel's lobby area. Later that night Shakur was shot dead in a drive-by shooting in a killing that has yet to be solved.

"We're not going to let the criminal element take over and make our town unsafe," Roxanne McDaris, Lieutenant with the events planning section of the Las Vegas police, told the Las Vegas Review-Journal newspaper earlier this week. "We're doing everything in our power to make it safe."

Tim Jeffery, MGM's vice president of security, said security will be enhanced with their hotel employees supplementing the police.

Jeffrey also said they are going streamline crowd control after the fight and open more exit doors to prevent another lobby stampede.

"We are going to be directing people to specific exits to avoid that logjam," he said. "You will see a noticeable increase in the number of security." — Agence France-Presse

source: gmanetwork.com

Mayweather, a perfect fighter but flawed man, cashes in

LAS VEGAS - Floyd Mayweather Jr. describes himself as a perfectionist and inside the ring the boxer known as the 'Money Man' is just that, his flawless professional record of 47-0 a monument to perfection.

But outside the arena Mayweather's pursuit of an equally accomplished life ended long ago in defeat, the gunman of his own character assassination.

Over the last decade, Mayweather has been accused of assaulting five different women on at least seven different occasions, including a 2010 incident that resulted in a 90-day prison sentence.

But it is the perfect fighter not the flawed man some boxing fans will pay over $100,000 to watch on Saturday when Mayweather steps into the ring at the MGM Grand Arena to face the soft-spoken but stone fisted Manny Pacquiao in what is expected to be the biggest grossing prize fight of all time.

"I'm a little different from everyone else," Mayweather explained to reporters. "I am only human, I make mistakes. I try to be a perfectionist but no one is perfect.

"We don't know how this fight is going to play out but I believe in my skills."

Supreme confidence and self-belief are qualities that have never been in short supply for a boxer who has not tasted defeat since a controversial loss to Bulgarian Serafim Todorov in a semi-final bout at the 1996 Olympics.

That loss so stung Mayweather that he vowed never to lose again. He immediately turned professional and 19 years later has held true to his word, capturing 11 world titles in five weight divisions and amassed a fortune that last year put him atop Forbes' annual rankings of the highest paid athletes.

Win-or-lose on Saturday, the title of the world's best paid sportsman is one Mayweather is likely to maintain with a guaranteed payday of $120 million that some predict could top $180 million, depending on pay-per-view buys.

The money will support a lavish lifestyle that includes a Las Vegas mansion, a fleet of exotic cars and a private jet that he says he will use after the fight to criss-cross the United States to watch the NBA playoffs.

Latest stop

The glitz of the Las Vegas Strip and Saturday's 'Fight of the Century' is the latest stop in a decades-long journey that began 38 years ago in the grit and grime of Grand Rapids, Michigan.

Mayweather Jr. was born into a boxing obsessed family to a drug addict mother and it was there in the rust belt that his father, Floyd Mayweather Sr., who once fought Sugar Ray Leonard, would polish and hone his son's considerable boxing skills.

Over the years the Mayweather father/son, trainer/boxer relationship has been a stormy one, Floyd Sr. once using his young son as a human shield when a relative threatened to shoot him.

For all the strain and long periods of estrangement, however, the Mayweathers have so far developed an unbeatable game plan and on Saturday Floyd Sr. will be in his son's corner mapping out the strategy.

"From the beginning of my career, I've always had a game plan. It's just like chess," said Mayweather.

"We make calculated moves in the ring and outside the ring. I got with the right team and surrounded myself with the right chess pieces. I'm a lot older now, a lot wiser."

Indeed, the father of four appears to have undergone a noticeable personality change that hints at a new maturity ahead of the biggest fight of his career.

Gone, for the moment, is the brash, trash-talking Mayweather to be replaced by a reflective fighter more keenly aware of his legacy.

Now 38, Mayweather veered of topic during a pre-fight news conference to talk about the part a parent plays as a role model while declaring himself a pioneering anti-doping crusader for taking a stand against drugs and refusing fight Pacquiao until the Filipino agreed to out-of-competition blood-testing.

"Children should look up to their parents first," said Mayweather. "Parents should be the role model first before an athlete.

"We do certain things, I come out I speak loud, I have the flamboyant 'Money Mayweather' persona but that doesn't mean I hate anyone. It is all about entertainment. People want to be entertained." — Reuters

Pacquiao gets his revenge, dispatches Bradley for WBO title

It took two years, but Manny Pacquiao can finally say he has defeated Timothy Bradley Jr.

The Sarangani congressman, who lost the first time the two met in a controversial split decision, took down the previously-undefeated American by unanimous decision, 118-110, 116-112, 116-112, Saturday (Sunday, PHL time), in their WBO welterweight title bout held at the MGM Grand Garden Arena, also the site of their first bout.

[Review the round-by-round coverage here]


The Filipino ring icon improved to 56-5 with two drawn and 38 wins inside the distance as he regained the World Boxing Organization welterweight world title he lost to Bradley on June 9, 2012.

Although he couldn't get his first knockout win since 2009, Pacquiao lived up to his pre-fight promise to come out with more aggression, denying Bradley's avowed aim of sending him into retirement with another defeat.

"I think I can go another two years," said Pacquiao, who has won world titles in an unprecedented eight weight divisions. "I'm so happy to be world champion again. Tim Bradley was not an easy fight."

Bradley, who said he fought from the first round with a right calf injury, fell to 31-1, with 12 knockouts.

"Life goes on," Bradley said of his first pro defeat. "It's back to the gym. Not a big deal."

Judge Glen Trowbridge scored the bout 118-110 for Pacquiao, while both Michael Pernick and Canada's Craig Metcalf saw it 116-112 for the 'Pacman,' whose every move was cheered by the star-studded crowd of 15,601 at the MGM Grand Garden Arena.

After a tight first round, Pacquiao made his power felt in the second.

The third saw both fighters exchange at a furious rate, Pacquiao again landing the more damaging blows.

But Bradley shook Pacquiao in the fourth, and Pacquiao said California's "Desert Storm" was an improved fighter from the one who took a bitterly debated split decision in their first fight.

"Bradley is better from the first fight," Pacquiao said. "He hurt me on the chin. He made adjustments.

"I knew I had to do more this time than I did the last time," he added.

Although the pace slowed in the later rounds, Pacquiao put together multi-punch combinations in the seventh, and out-worked Bradley in the remaining rounds.

After throwing few punches in the 11th, a desperate Bradley swung wildly in the 12th, and Pacquiao finished the fight with a cut over his left eye from a clash of heads late in the final round.


For Pacquiao, his win opens the door to a fifth battle against Juan Manuel Marquez, should the Mexican win against Mike Alvarado on May 17, 2014 (May 18, PHL time). The Sarangani congressman though wouldn’t discuss any specifics, saying, “It depends on my promoter Bob Arum…my job is to fight in the ring any opponent.”

Back in 2012, Bradley won 115-113 115-113 113-115 despite Pacquiao looking like he dominated most of their match. Pacquiao followed that up with a shocking KO loss to Juan Manuel Marquez, prompting some to consider him too old to become a serious contender in the sport.

However, in this bout, Pacquiao made sure there was no room for doubt, en route to his win.  - with a report from AFP / AMD, GMA News

source: gmanetwork.com

Pacquiao eager for decisive win in Bradley rematch

LAS VEGAS - Manny Pacquiao wants a decisive victory over Timothy Bradley in their eagerly anticipated welterweight world title rematch Saturday (Sunday, PHL time) in Las Vegas as he bids to avenge a controversial loss two years ago.

America's Bradley, renowned for his amazing durability, snapped the Philippine icon's 15-fight unbeaten streak with a debatable split decision triumph in their first showdown on June 9, 2012.

The 30-year-old Bradley is out to prove he was deserving of the World Boxing Organization belt he seized that night and has since defended twice.

For Pacquiao, 35, whose loss to Bradley was followed by a sixth-round knockout defeat to Juan Manuel Marquez, it's imperative he prove his unanimous decision victory over Brandon Rios in his only fight of 2013 marked a real rebirth of his ring career.

"This is a 'must-win' situation for us," Pacquiao's Hall of Fame trainer Freddie Roach said.

Even though Roach and "Pacman" want a clear-cut victory, both said Pacquiao - who has had to fend off talk of retirement - can't go in aiming for a knockout.

Instead, they say he must press his attack consistently, avoiding the fallow minutes that apparently cost him the decision in the first Bradley fight, even though Pacquiao landed more punches and more power punches overall.

"I'm not thinking about a knockout," the Filipino said. "My focus is to throw a lot of punches. I'm going to be aggressive. If the knockout comes, it's a bonus."

Added Roach: "We're looking to win every round, one at a time."

'Manny can punch'

Southpaw Pacquiao, the only man to win world titles in eight weight divisions, staked his claim to boxing's pound-for-pound crown with a spate of impressive knockout victories in 2008 and 2009.

That included a ninth-round stoppage of David Diaz that proved Pacquiao could step up to lightweight and retain his fearsome power.

He went on to stop Oscar de la Hoya in a 2008 welterweight bout, and delivered a spectacular second-round knockout of Britain's Ricky Hatton in 2009.

Later that year, he punished Miguel Cotto en route to a 12th-round technical knockout in another welterweight bout - but Pacquiao hasn't finished off an opponent inside the distance since.

Debate has raged as to whether he has lost his knockout power, or perhaps become too "compassionate" towards opponents after a deepening of his Catholic faith.

"Manny can punch - he does have knockout power," Roach insisted Thursday (Friday, PHL time) as the fight at the MGM Grand Garden Arena drew near.

If Pacquiao has held back out of compassion for his foes, Roach said he'd likely learned his lesson in his most recent defeats.

In the 2012 loss to Marquez, Pacquiao had the Mexican star on the canvas in the fifth round and in trouble in the sixth before Marquez connected for a stunning one-punch knockout.

Pacquiao, who owns a record 55-5 with two drawn and 38 knockouts, puts that defeat down to "carelessness."

However, it's given Bradley some boasting rights since the American has since edged Marquez in a duel between the last two men to beat Pacquiao.

That win over Marquez followed Bradley's 12-round decision over Ruslan Provodnikov, in which the American absorbed a massive amount of punishment before emerging triumphant.

'Tough guy'

Bradley's durability - on display against Provodnikov - is one reason not to seek a knock-out, Roach said.

"He's a very resilient, tough, tough guy," Roach said.

But Roach believes that Pacquiao has the skill to cope with Bradley's slick movement, and showed against Rios that he can still put together long combinations that will make the difference against the counter-punching Bradley.

"We're using a lot of angles and hopefully that will nullify his defense," Roach said. "We'll set traps, catch him on the ropes - when we have him on the ropes, Manny knows what to do."

And if the chance to knock out Bradley does come, Roach believes Pacquiao will take it without hesitation, fired by Bradley's pre-fight claim that Pacquiao had lost his "killer instinct."

"When we're on the mitts we talk sometimes about strategy and what's going to happen," Roach said.

"He told me one day, 'When I hurt him, this is the combination I'm going to finish him with.'

"I was so happy to hear that." - AFP

source: gmanetwork.com