It didn’t go out live on air, nor was it recorded, but a conversation Floyd Mayweather Junior is supposed to have had with Tim Bradley this past Saturday would have been a very interesting one to have eavesdropped on. According to a piece by Wallace Matthews on ESPN.com, the retired great is supposed to have told the beaten Bradley that he had Saturday’s rubber-match between Bradley and the now retired Manny Pacquiao all even as a draw.
Officially, as we know, Pacquiao won by three commanding scores of 116-110, yet “Money” is said to have scored the fight even. According to “a source familiar with the conversation,” Mayweather asked for a meeting with Bradley and told him the following:
“Go home and watch the replay with the sound off.”
Mayweather, apparently, felt the noise the pro-Pac-Man crowd made influenced the three scoring judges. Also, Mayweather is said to have said how he felt the beaten Bradley was winning the 7th, crucial, round, before a half-knockdown/half-push scored by Pacquiao cost Bradley a winning round and gave him a 10-8 round against him. That 7th-round knockdown might have been debatable, but the knockdown Pac-Man scored in the 9th sure wasn’t. It would be interesting to see Mayweather’s breakdown of the fight, to see just which rounds he gave Bradley.
Still, if Floyd did say what the ESPN article says he did, Bradley is sure to have taken some heart from it. So too may Bradley’s trainer Teddy Atlas, who was very upset at “failing” his fighter. Maybe Atlas, like Bradley, will hear what Floyd had to say, watch a tape of the fight, and have a change of heart. It seems controversy, of some kind or another, follows the Pacquiao-Bradley fights; well, two of them anyway.
Everyone calls the first fight between the two, won by Bradley on the cards, one of the most controversial in recent history. While now, in light of what Mayweather Junior is said to have said, maybe a good number of fans will also re-watch Saturday’s fight, with the sound off, and decide the official result was not accurate!
Maybe.
Mayweather also told Bradley (again, supposedly) that he felt Bradley performed like an improved fighter and he encouraged him to carry on punching. Atlas will no doubt like the improved fighter comment. Atlas, as we know, has worked just two fights with Bradley, coming on board as his new trainer back in September of last year.