Bradley’s trainer calls Pacquiao boxing ‘freak’

LAS VEGAS – Teddy Atlas, the former boxing analyst of ESPN who is now the main man in Tim Bradley’s corner, is simply awed by Manny Pacquiao and had to go philosophical at one instance before saying the Filipino icon was simply a boxing “freak.”

“When you’re competing against somebody as talented as Manny, he wins because of pure talent. He’s a freak,” said Atlas two days before Pacquiao takes on his fighter at the MGM Grand here.

In a roundtable discussion inside the spacious Media Center of the MGM, Bradley’s trainer said what Pacquiao brings to the ring is something rarely seen.

“The combination of speed and power that he has – it’s uncommon,” said Atlas, a longtime ESPN analyst.

Then with his philosophical ways, Atlas bared how he and Bradley were breaking the situation down, and how they looked at things in their two months of training.

“Competing against someone like that, what can happen is you see the obvious but you don’t see the stuff before the obvious,” he said.

 “The obvious,” he said, “is the explosion of ability and you’re aware of that – the straight left hand, the right hook. The quickness, the surges, the hurricane of punches that come at you.”

“But you don’t see what comes before the storm. I help my fighters see what comes before the obvious (which is Pacquiao) coming forward with the explosion of punches,” he said.

In real life, the analytical trainer continued, there’s always a warning before the storm kicks in, like the “skies darkening a little bit.”

Bradley, he said, should look for those signs, big or small, inside the ring.

That’s the only way Bradley can sneak something in before the “obvious” gets into the picture.

“There’s some warning that shows you something, some delay, something there before that happens. That’s what I was hopefully trying to impart to my fighter and see what that was,” said Atlas.

“Or before the explosion from Manny, there’s some preliminary to that, the habits that come before that. Those are the things we try to look at and are aware of, and do something about it,” he added.

Preparing for a fight as big as this, Atlas said it’s so easy to lose sleep as he keeps on guessing.

“That keeps me awake at night,” he said.

“I’d trade this apple for a crystal ball. I might actually want to do this again if I had a crystal ball. But I don’t.  Nobody does,” he added.