A Solid Wager on Tonight’s Pacquiao-Bradley Fight

Matt Lessinger is one of the best wagering analysts I know.  He’s what I call “solid.”  I don’t even need an explanation when I’m told that Lessinger has taken a position.  I can be confident the work’s already been done and he has the right side.

Of course, that doesn’t mean he always wins.  It just means he’s made a solid wager based on getting the best value.  Ideally, that’s all you can hope for when you engage in sports wagering.

Lessinger is not a tout.  He doesn’t sell his picks.  He’s not even connected in any way to the sports gambling business.

Yet, Lessinger has appeared in a variety of public and private forums, ranging from sports betting discussion groups to National Public Radio (NPR).  I’ve followed his advice and bet his recommendations for many years — mostly on the non-traditional events.  Lessinger handicaps events like boxing, MMA/UFC, team season-win totals, propositions, and (most unusual of all) Grammy Awards, Academy Awards, and things like that.  In fact, he’s perhaps the best handicapper in the world on these kinds of once-a-year events, one of the reasons he’s appeared as a guest on NPR to analyze the chances of various artists winning awards.  You should read his analysis of the Grammys sometime.  Amazing.

Lessinger is also a well-established poker writer, having written countless columns for many years.  He also authored The Book of Bluffs.  Lessinger is married and lives in the Bay area.  He and his wife recently had a baby, their first.  Congratulations, Matt.

A few days ago, Lessinger shared his thoughts on the Pacquiao-Bradley fight, which takes place tonight in Las Vegas.  I requested permission to share his analysis with the public.  He was gracious enough to agree.  Naturally, I must post a disclaimer that this information is for entertainment only.  I’m not trying to influence people to go out and make wagers.  Just in case you are interested in boxing, I expect you will find this interesting.

What follows is Matt Lessinger’s comments (which appeared in an e-mail) on the fight:

I am on TIMOTHY BRADLEY at +180, with a much smaller wager on the DRAW at +2000.  There are several reasons why I think Bradley is the right side:

1.  Even though Bradley won the first fight, he’s the one with something still to prove.  Everyone believes Pacquiao won the first fight (I do too, I just don’t think it was as lopsided as everyone seems to think it was).  Bradley has convinced me that he is much more motivated than Pacquiao for this fight.  Even if Pacquiao loses, most people will think of their two fights as being one win for each, and there still might be demand for a third fight.  Pacquiao is nearing the end of his fighting career and has very little left to prove.  Bradley is 30 years old, and he could just be getting started.  He needs this win to keep his stock on the rise.  Right now he is PPV material.  If he does not win, or at least come very close to winning, he could be dropped back to standard HBO, which is still nice but would be a huge drop in pay.  If Pacquiao decides to keep fighting, he will always be a PPV attraction whether he wins or loses this fight, so his motivation is likely not as strong.

2.  Bradley injured both his left foot and his right ankle early in their first fight.  The post-fight doctor’s report confirmed those injuries, plus he came to the post-fight interview in a wheelchair.  Even if you don’t think he won, he still managed to put up a hell of a fight on two bad injuries.  So now you have a healthy Bradley, on the upswing of his career, fighting Pacquiao on his downswing.  It is unlikely Pacquiao will be able to control this fight anywhere close to the way he did in fight #1, yet the odds put a lot of stock in that performance.  Too much stock, IMHO.  Bradley is a very intelligent fighter, and he can be counted on to adjust properly to do better this time around.

3.  Pacquiao cherry-picked his most recent opponent Brandon Rios and fought him in front of a home crowd in Macau and beat him handily.  It’s not that Rios is a bad fighter, but he is the perfect style for Pacquiao to dominate, and he did.  The fight was meant for Pacquiao to look good after getting knocked silly by Juan Manuel Marquez, to set him up for this rematch.  If he had fought a more legit opponent, maybe this fight wouldn’t even be taking place.  Meanwhile Bradley purposely sought out two of the toughest opponents he could find for his last two fights.  Ruslan Provodnikov is someone nobody wants to fight, and with good reason.  The guy is a beast.  He can take insane punishment and keep coming.  Bradley survived two knockdowns and a concussion and still won a legit decision over Provodnikov, who has since won the WBO light-welterweight title in a stacked division.  It was a damned impressive performance, worth watching if you haven’t seen it.  Bradley then fought Juan Manuel Marquez, and dominated him in a way that Pacquiao never did in any of their four fights.  Admittedly, Marquez is on the downswing of his career just as Pacquiao is, but that too was an impressive Bradley win.  I cannot help but feel that he is only getting better with each fight, and that is not being accounted for correctly in the current line.

4.  Some people are of the opinion that, if the fight is close, judges will lean towards giving Pacquiao the decision in order to make amends for the poor decision in fight #1.  That seems like a romantic viewpoint to me.  Boxing does what is good for boxing.  Bradley is well-spoken, brash, confident, a good self-promoter, and most importantly, he is undefeated.  That goes a long way towards selling PPVs.  There is a huge difference between the appeal in watching a 32-0 Bradley and a 31-1 Bradley.  Just ask Floyd Mayweather.  I still feel he lost to Jose Luis Castillo early in his career.  But by getting a favorable decision in that fight, he was able to market himself as an undefeated superstar, which led to hundreds of millions of dollars in PPV sales he might not have gotten if he had a loss on his record.  I’m sure the boxing “powers that be” have that on their minds when they are deciding how to judge a close Bradley fight.

If you combine the assumption that Bradley will perform a lot better than he did in fight #1, with the assumption that he will be favored in another close decision, +180 seems like great value.

I actually think he will win the fight convincingly, so the judges probably won’t have to finagle their scorecards anyway.

Also, I think a KO from either fighter would be very surprising, so that makes it tempting to bet either the OVER 9.5 rounds at -325, or YES on the fight going the distance at -250.  What makes me wary of placing either wager is that, whenever you get lefty vs. righty, there is always the threat of accidental head butts.  Bradley has also been known to use his head to his advantage, and occasionally throws in a not-so-accidental head butt.  While a KO is unlikely, combining it with the possibility of the fight having to be stopped because of cuts from butts makes either wager riskier than I would like.

Cheers,

Matt L.