Boxing
WBO review panel unanimous: Pacquiao should have won fight vs Bradley
Reuters
A World Boxing Organization review of the controversial championship bout between Manny Pacquiao and Tim Bradley (Manila time) concludes that the Filipino boxing icon should have won the fight. The finding was unanimously arrived at by five international boxing experts tapped by the WBO to re-score the fight.
James Slater of Eastsideboxing.com reported on Thursday that “the five officials, from all over the world, sat down and viewed a video of the fight earlier this week. Not surprisingly, considering the fact that most fans and experts had Pacquiao winning big over the unbeaten Bradley, all 5 WBO judges re-scored the fight for Pac-Man – and they scored it big for Manny.”
The scores, all for Pacquiao:
- 115-111,
- 116-112
- 117-111
- 118-110
- 117-111
“That’s about as comprehensive as you can get,” Slater said. “And the new scores are bound to convince the critics further that either incompetence or something darker was at work on June 9th.”
Bradley will keep his WBO championship belt, however. The WBO sanctioned and commissioned the review, but it had made clear that regardless of the panel’s finding, it cannot overturn the official result the Pacquiao-Bradley fight: a controversial split decision for Bradley.
