Timothy Bradley's hands didn't defeat Devon Alexander, his head did -- Examiner

By Paula Duffy, Examiner.com

Devon Alexander's manager and trainer Kevin Cunningham let loose after the ten-round technical loss inflicted on his hard hitting young fighter at the hands of Timothy Bradley (27-0, 11 KOs).

"The last thing I told the referee before the fight was that Timmy's last six opponents have been cut by head butts. I told him, I told him, I told him,"

Yeah Kevin you told him, but what did you do to prepare your fighter? Alexander (21-1, 13 KOs) told HBO's Larry Merchant after the fight that he was in top shape and trained to the max, but there is no way to train for head butts.

Bradley won the HBO-named Super Fight that unified the WBO and WBC championships in the 140 pound category. One of the men in the ring at the Pontiac Silverdome outside Detroit, would suffer his first loss and Alexander pulled the short straw.

Hyped as a highly unusual meeting of undefeated American fighters, the actual boxing part of the evening bore out the fact that these men were evenly matched, if measured solely on the stats.

Luckily for Bradley, the judges saw a more aggressive fighter who seemed to stun, if not hurt Alexander when he landed his blistering right hand. The judges scored it 97-93, 96-95, and 98-93

The 27 year-old is trained by the giant of a man-trainer Gary Shaw, who cowered in the training room with Mrs. Bradley rather than sit ringside and be an emotional wreck. That alone was worth watching and it isn't clear if Shaw knows that without his fighter's use of his noggin he wouldn't get past the faster Alexander.

Bradley's first accidental head butt, seen as a punch by the ring referee Frank Garza, opened a gash on Alexander's right eyelid that required multiple stitches.

But it was the condition of the fighter's left eye, the general area of the last accidental head butt, that ultimately caused ring doctor Peter Samet to stop the fight at 1:59 of the tenth round. Alexander couldn't open it and was screaming that it was burning.

At the end of the fight, he was cut and gashed as if he were fighting Edward Scissorhands.

Perhaps that is a good nickname for Bradley who has his sights set on Amir Khan, but ultimately wants what all 140 pounders want: a shot at Manny Pacquiao.

Timothy Bradley's next opponent might want to consider figuring out how to keep his forehead and eyes from meeting their demise, not at the hands of Bradley but his head.

Source: examiner.com