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Timothy Bradley makes significant changes after questionable draw

Timothy Bradley remains an elite physical specimen and, at 31, is in his boxing prime. Still, Bradley made substantial changes to his training techniques while preparing for his HBO-televised fight against Jessie Vargas on Saturday for the vacant WBO welterweight title at the StubHub Center in Carson, Calif.

Referee Tony Weeks pulls Timothy Bradley from Diego Chaves after he fell to the mat during their welterweight bout. (Getty)
Referee Tony Weeks pulls Timothy Bradley from Diego Chaves after he fell to the mat during their welterweight bout. (Getty)

Bradley and trainer Joel Diaz used sledgehammers and medicine balls, and swam a lot more than normal. Bradley abandoned the vegan diet he's followed for years and is eating chicken, fish and, once a week, steak.

It's a matter of perspective, though, whether change is a good thing. He suffered the first defeat of his brilliant career by decision last year to Manny Pacquiao. And many observers felt he was robbed of a win in his fight with Diego Chaves, which the judges ruled a split draw.

The cold, hard truth of it, though, is that draw, however unfair, left Bradley 0-1-1 in the past 20 months.

Bradley looks like something out of the pages of a bodybuilding magazine, with muscles rippling on top of muscles and no visible fat. He is as confident as ever and insists he'll hand Vargas a crushing defeat. Vargas is 26-0 but has never fought anyone remotely on Bradley's level. And Bradley is hell-bent to prove to Vargas that he's reached too far.

"Vargas is puppy chow to me," Bradley said. "He's dog food. I can't let this go to the judges."

The changes were spurred by the draw with Chaves. Bradley threw more punches. He landed more punches. He connected at a higher percentage and, in the opinion of many, seemed to win the fight going away.

The draw ate at him, however, and he knew that the only way to prevent those kinds of results going forward was to remove the judges from the equation and to finish his fights.

Bradley is a thoughtful, introspective and rational man who takes a cerebral approach to his preparations. After the Chaves fight, his knockout percentage dipped to 36.4, and it stood out to him as the one thing he could improve.

"That draw was really a setback to me," Bradley said. "I couldn't understand how I got a draw. It hurt. Honestly, I felt I won the fight handily. It just hurt me to come out of there with a draw in a fight I felt I cleanly won. And so I felt I had to make some changes and go back to the roots and take it out of the judges' hands.

"They say fighters can't generate more power, that you have what you're born with and that's it. But I didn't believe it and I felt like I could study and figure out what I had to do. I would see baseball players adding power later in their careers, and there were golfers who started hitting it farther. And of course, tennis players, too. So I kind of figured, 'If these guys can add power, why can't I?' So I had to just go out and try to figure out how to make it happen."

Manny Pacquiao delivers a blow against Timothy Bradley in their WBO welterweight title boxing fight in April 2014. (AP)
Manny Pacquiao delivers a blow against Timothy Bradley in their WBO welterweight title boxing fight in April 2014. (AP)

Some might question the wisdom of Bradley's choice to make significant changes. He looked brilliant in an October 2013 win against the great Juan Manuel Marquez. And while he unquestionably lost to Pacquiao in April 2014, that was hardly a killer since Pacquiao is one of the great fighters in the world and Bradley was hardly outclassed.

Though he got the distasteful draw in his December bout with Chaves, most observers felt he won and Chaves is a vastly underrated opponent.

"Man, I've got tons of respect for Chaves and he's a difficult fight for anyone at 140 or 147 [pounds]," Bradley said.

Athletes and their coaches rarely make wholesale changes when things are going as well as they are now for Bradley. Normally, they adjust or make significant changes only when they're forced to, when they feel they need a new approach to old problems.

And so Bradley and Diaz embarked together on the old-school training regimen, designed to re-establish their mark at the place at the top of the division.

After Bradley topped Marquez in Las Vegas to run his record to 31-0, there was no talk of change. Rather, Bradley pined for a match against Floyd Mayweather Jr., then and now the pound-for-pound best fighter in the world, and spoke with the kind of unbridled optimism about his future that only an unbeaten world champion could do.

All of a sudden, though, the unexpected draw with Chaves has given his fight against the unheralded Vargas a vastly different feel.

A loss to Vargas would leave Bradley without a victory in two years.

He remains, as ever, the fierce competitor, willing to pit his skills against the sport's best no matter the advantages he may surrender. But Vargas is supremely confident, loose and relaxed, perhaps emboldened by Chaves' success. When Bradley said he wanted to fight Erik Morales, Vargas' trainer after beating Vargas, Vargas took it as a sign of concern.

"I'm not surprised," Vargas said. "He is cracking up from the pressure of fight week. He's obviously very intimidated by what he is about to face on Saturday night. This fight will be his downfall. I have had the greatest training camp. I have never felt stronger or hit harder."

Bradley believes he'll out-box Vargas, but what he can't do no matter how many punches he lands or how often he makes Vargas miss is to control what the judges' write onto the scorecard.

He spent a great deal of time studying where a boxer's power comes from and focused a lot on his core strength. He paid a great deal of attention, in particular, to his hips. He said he discovered he had a balance issue in the past and worked assiduously in camp to correct it.

Diego Chaves reacts at the end of the his welterweight bout with Timothy Bradley Jr. (Getty)
Diego Chaves reacts at the end of the his welterweight bout with Timothy Bradley Jr. (Getty)

"Power comes from the ground up, and so that's what we worked on," he said. "We spent a ton of time working on that stuff, and it's made a difference. I'm hitting harder than I ever have. Ask Joel, since he holds the mitts for me. My sparring partners are coming up to me and saying, 'Dude, you've never hit like this before.'

"I know Jessie Vargas has a good chin. But if he can hold up to these shots I'm throwing, my hat is off to him. I felt like trying to figure out how to add power was like adding another dimension [to my arsenal]."

Bradley insisted that the changes are not a sign of panic. He's simply looking to improve and to avoid the terrible feeling he had after he walked out of the ring following the Chaves fight.

His goal is to make the International Boxing Hall of Fame and if he starts reeling off a series of knockouts, he'll strengthen his case.

"I want to be great, man, you know what I'm saying?" Bradley said. "I don't want to get to the point where I'm satisfied with the same old, same old. I want to keep pushing and keep improving and that's why I'm doing this. It's not panicking at all. It's trying to take what I have and make it better."