Timothy Bradley’s fine young consensus

LAS VEGAS – “He seemed to be selling something, as if by not getting knocked-out, he was winning. Odd ending for Bradley. Hard to see him winning this, but who knows?” Those were the final words in my ringside notes from Saturday’s main event, notes oblivious of whatever whacky scorecard happened on the pay-per-view telecast, and if I may be allowed to italicize something retroactively, I’d like to put the emphasis here: “but who knows?”

At Thomas & Mack Center, in the winner’s bracket for promoter Top Rank’s unannounced and asymmetrical welterweight tournament – we’ll get something akin to a middle bracket in Denver on Saturday and the loser’s bracket in China next month – American Timothy “Desert Storm” Bradley decisioned Mexican Juan Manuel “Dinamita” Marquez by split scores of 115-113, 113-115 and 116-112, scores whose reading put the majority-Mexican crowd in a lather.

I scored the fight for Marquez, 116-114. Rounds 1, 3, 4, 8, 9 and 11 went to the Mexican. Rounds 2, 6, 10 and 12 went to the American. Rounds 5 and 7 were even. And rounds 1, 2, 3, 4, 6 and 8 were all marked with an asterisk to remind me I was not certain who won them. If you’re looking for a blowhard expert, rarely right but never uncertain, an ally in your endless battle against any who would dissent, in other words, look elsewhere.

And let the well-deserved reevaluation of Timothy Bradley continue apace, as it did Saturday, as one expected it eventually would, with many folks milling round ringside citing as a reason for scorecards that went narrowly, and in some cases widely, for Bradley: Marquez missed an awful lot. That’s exactly right, he did, confirming Bradley’s awkward elusiveness, and raising hope many of these insiders will take their fresh consensus – consensus being something some crave like diabetics do insulin – along with Manny Pacquiao’s subsequent vulnerability, and someday review Bradley-Pacquiao with a touch more scrutiny, noticing, at last, Manny Pacquiao missed an awful lot too.

The inertia 16 months ago was with Pacquiao, though, and confirmations abounded, from the promoter to the HBO commentating crew to the drunken masses on social media. The inertia that informs such confirmatory musings is now shifted Bradley’s way, and good for him. Bradley was disciplined enough to engage Marquez only rarely, and solely when something invisible between the men made an audible click in Bradley’s mind that assured him the arrangement was changed and he would get the better of what came next, an audible click whose false positives Marquez’s career was built creating. But when Bradley leaped at Marquez, cranking his right hand as Bradley is wont to do, never a straight cross but more a bent, arcing, descending motion dependent on pulling violently backwards on the lead shoulder, he somehow knew Marquez’s only meaningful counter would come via a left hook, and so, whatever else Bradley did, he returned his right glove to temple, quickly, and kept it there on the way out.

But where was The Marquez, the fabled left-uppercut-lead, right-cross combination with which the Mexican outboxed Pacquiao for the final 18 minutes of their third encounter? The answer to that question is perhaps a doorway in the room of why the Bradley consensus now shifts: The few times Marquez threw it, necessarily using a leftwards tilt for its trigger, Bradley clubbed him with a short left of his own that disrupted the trajectory of Marquez’s punch enough to have it miss and make Marquez, a master boxer who delights little in being struck unnecessarily, holster his trademark combination. In this subtle way, too, Marquez was able to holster Bradley’s otherwise effective jab by flashing a signal of some kind, a thing only the fighters sensed, something imperceptible to others as the consent given by mating birds of paradise, that told Bradley to alter immediately his rhythm because Marquez had the pattern marked, the code deciphered, and Bradley’s next repetition might be his last repetition.

Marquez was embittered afterwards, in part because he is a Nacho Beristain fighter, and that requires absorbing elements of the master’s dour disposition, a stream of resentment that runs deep and cold and fresh, going unnoticed like an abandoned well never filled-in, only covered, until one hits the wrong spot and suddenly plumbs its depths. Where Marquez’s embitterment about the third Pacquiao fight was well placed – he had beaten Pacquiao for 16 1/2 of their match’s final 18 minutes and seen a scorecard by Glenn Trowbridge capture its image like a photographic negative, exactly transposed, perfectly backwards – his embitterment about Saturday’s decision seemed overly theatrical, almost Hopkinsesque, but that’s Marquez, and that’s coming from someone who scored the match for Marquez.

There was a moment of unexpected angst for me in round 10, Saturday, when I wondered if I should even continue scoring the match, so little sense I was able to make of it. To my eyes, neither guy was hitting the other more than a couple meaningful times every three minutes, and while Marquez was not moving much (his personal trainer gave him power to extend and extend again a career that looked done with in 2009, but not even Memo’s prodigious potions returned Dinamita’s once balletic legwork), Bradley was exulting way too much in not being hit. Bradley’s plan appeared to be about not getting hit, finishing on his feet conscious enough to enjoy the view, and everything else was muddling through, a mess of athleticism and fitness and the disproportionately large head with which he struck Marquez in round 1, and selling ring generalship to the judges, and bless him, it worked!

This was not Bradley’s best fight, just as Pacquiao was not Bradley’s best fight, and if Bradley is still undefeated in five years, imagine for a moment what it will say of his legacy that he beat Manny Pacquiao and Juan Manuel Marquez on nights his advocates do not believe were his best.

Welcome to your fine young consensus, then, Tim, and enjoy it. Heaven knows you earned it.

Bart Barry can be reached at bart.barrys.email (at) gmail.com