Timothy Bradley takes a few minutes to talk to media members about what he saw in Miguel Berchelts awful showing against Jeremiah Nakathila over the weekend. Bradley says he sensed things were off with Berchelt from their fighter meeting before the bout, and that it seems evident Berchelt doesn’t have much left to offer. Check out some excerpts of what Bradley had to say below.
Bradley on Berchelt’s performance against Nakathila
“He definitely was a shell of himself,” Bradley said. “In the fighter meeting I knew something wasn’t right, especially when I asked him and his trainer, I said ‘what was the test during training camp?’ ‘Cause I’ve been in a situation similar to his, and I had the Fight of the Year with Ruslan Provodnikov, took a lot of punishment in that fight, some big shots, and I knew mentally I wasn’t the same. I was unsure of myself, if I could take a punch, taking that many punches during the course of a fight.
“So what my trainer did, Joel Diaz at the time, put me in the ring — first day in the gym — against Lucas Matthysse. Big puncher. And he’s like ‘you’re either gonna sink or you’re gonna swim, and depending on how you look today we’re gonna take that Marquez fight or not, depending on how you look today. If you look gun shy or whatever it is, can’t take a punch or whatever, then we not gonna take the fight because I care about your health.’
“Aight, so I got in the ring, held my own, wasn’t spooked at all. I fought the best I possibly could, I was out of shape but Matthysse, he did his thing, but after that we said ‘oh, we’re ready,’ because I was in there with a big puncher and he wanted to see how I’d react to it. You don’t want to wait until you get (to the fight) to see how your fighter react, you got to test him in the gym. We always hear fights are won in the gym, that’s true, they are won in the gym and how you prepare for things.
“He should’ve got tested before he got in there because I saw a guy that was gun shy inside the ring. I saw a guy a little bit confused as far as how to beat — because a little bit of his nature was probably taken away because he was trying to be a little bit more economical and more defensive with his approach because he didn’t want to get hit. But it is what it is, and I said during the broadcast ‘mentally it affects you, and not only mentally but physically.’ When he got hit with that jab and he went down, right on the chin, that right there told me so. His legs never looked great at all, never looked like his legs was ever stable.
“I would advise — only he knows his body — but just based on what I saw tonight, a shell of himself now. Oscar Valdez fight probably ended his career, no doubt about it.”