By Vitali Shaposhnikov: When Juan Manuel Marquez stated that he thought that the fight between Pacquiao and Bradley wasn’t even close, and that Pacquiao should have won by at least five points, he was being nice compared to how Andre Ward feels about the situation.
Andre Ward had the following to say on this very hot topic: “It was a ridiculous decision. Bradley lost the majority of the rounds. If it was me personally, I would admit defeat and say, ‘Here’s your belt back.’ There was nothing there, nothing to suggest it was even close. If you were being generous, extremely generous, maybe you could give Tim four rounds and he loses 8-4. I love Tim, he is a friend of mine, but he has to know that he lost that fight.” (http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2012/06/12/SPCK1P0LFH.DTL)
What can you say; Ward’s thoughts and opinions happen to match with most other boxers, analysts, and the majority of the fans. I am not necessarily sure that admitting loss or giving back the belt is something any fighter would ever do. It is definitely not something that Timothy Bradley should do or say, simply because it is not his fault. Blaming him for anything is simply not fair. He fought much better than most had anticipated, and shoed heart and determination. If the fight ever lands in the judges’ hands, what they say is what gets announced.
As a boxer and a fan of the sport, Ward is very worried about the integrity damage something like this may cause: “My first reaction was shock, then anger and then sadness. I have dedicated half of my life to this sport and what happened Saturday is unacceptable. And it’s going to continue to happen until there is a commission that starts to impose sanctions. There have to be investigations and punishments. That’s a shame, because they’re messing with people’s livelihoods when they allow this to happen. It hurts the sport’s credibility, it hurts the pay-per-view numbers … Boxing was doing great again after the Mayweather- (Miguel) Cotto fight, but one situation like this and we’re back on life support.”
The sport is not yet on life support, but things are looking grim. A decision like this, involving a huge name like Pacquiao, will send ripples that will last a long while. There certainly needs to be an effort shown, an attempt to try and figure out how this decision was reached. People needs to see that everything was done in a legal and fair fashion, because if nothing is done about it, expect an angry army of fans boycotting PPV fights and certain promotional events.