TIMOTHY TIME!
Obscure Bradley Clocks Witter To Become A Junior Welter Player

By Brian Doogan

For most of his life, Steve Farhood has asked questions of fighters, probing questions, fair questions, questions that have revealed character and insight. But in the early hours of May 10 in Nottingham, England, some time around 3:30 a.m. in the lobby of the Crowne Plaza Hotel, the veteran boxing writer and broadcaster found himself asking the obvious question: “Why are you not sleeping?” Timothy Bradley, who would challenge Junior Witter for the WBC light welterweight title less than 20 hours later, smiled at his inquisitor and replied almost nonchalantly, “You know, I could ask you the same question!”

With the ice broken, they talked some more. Farhood explained that he was struggling to adjust his body clock from American East Coast time and Bradley revealed that he made a conscious decision to sleep during the day between 2 p.m. and 9 p.m., then to get up and remain awake during the night, sticking as closely as he could to American West Coast time. During the course of the conversation, however, the unbeaten but untested Californian made an ominous admission: “I’ll be glad when it’s over.”

Farhood interpreted that as a bad sign.

“Yes, I was anxious to get it over and done with,” Bradley told THE RING one week later from his home in Palm Springs, California. “The training was done, I was ready and I just wanted to get in the ring and get the job done. I felt anxious, but it was not a case of the occasion getting to me all of a sudden. I knew how big an opportunity this was and I prepared for it, so I knew that I was well equipped to handle it and come out with the biggest win of my career. When we bumped into one another in the lobby of the hotel, I told Steve that it was all mental, and as long as I could perform in the ring, all of the things that I had worked on in camp, I would not have any problems. I believed in myself that much, but I also realized that the moment had arrived when I needed to deliver.”

The 24-year-old, nicknamed “Desert Storm,” delivered the kind of performance that elevated him instantly into the upper reaches of the 140-pound division. His speed, elusiveness, power, and punch placement proved too much for the 34-year-old Witter to deal with and “The Hitter” from Bradford, England, suffered the first defeat of his career since being outpointed by Zab Judah eight years ago in Glasgow.

For Witter, this was a devastating blow, ruining his chances—however slim—of securing an all-British showdown against world junior welterweight champion Ricky Hatton.

“I don’t think he’ll fight me now,” Witter admitted candidly.

A class act, he made no reference to the shattering news he had received just a couple of weeks prior to the bout that his father, Wilson, had been diagnosed to be suffering from a serious (undisclosed) illness. “Junior had been training [in Sheffield] and then running to and from Bradford because of his dad’s illness, and that sort of thing going on in your life would have an effect on anybody,” Brendan Ingle, Witter’s trainer, said to THE RING. “Taking nothing away from the other kid, this was swimming around in his head for two weeks leading into the fight and it is something that he and his family will have to deal with over the coming weeks and months as well.”

Meanwhile, Bradley has been adjusting to his own dramatically changed circumstances. When he left for England he was an unknown quantity outside of his native California, but after returning home to a quiet family celebration, he threw open the doors of his gym to the media and the reaction was overwhelming. “Everything has been real busy since I got back here,” he reported. A celebratory luncheon was held at a location in downtown Los Angeles and dignitaries also honored him in his hometown as well as in nearby Riverside. Like so many fighters, however, his life might have turned out so differently.

By his own admission, Bradley endangered his prospects of ever making it out of the ghetto by hanging around with thugs and gang members. Baggy pants were his regular apparel and petty crime and drugs were an ever-present danger. His parents did their best to keep him on the right path, but it was the road that led to a boxing gym that proved to be his salvation. A neighborhood friend named Julio brought him along when he was nine years old, and the way that Bradley sees it now is that he never looked back.

“I grew up in the north side of Palm Springs and it was tough, man. It was the ghetto, full of drug dealers, gang-bangers, and all of that stuff. If you weren’t careful, there could be something bad around the next street corner, that’s what it seemed like,” he recalled. “To a kid, all of that wild stuff seems glamorous and you get sidetracked. I was hanging out with bad company and getting into fights at school, wearing baggy pants that only went halfway up my butt. My parents had to really stay on me, but when you’re that age, you don’t listen to your parents, do you? Not when your peers are out on the street and they’re taking you in a different direction.

“Basically, I was hanging out with gangsters and thugs and, eventually, I would have gone into a life of drugs. I was already pretty good at going into the store to steal and getting away without getting caught … and I was only eight, nine, 10 years old. So you can see where things were going. Then one day my friend, Julio, took me to the boxing gym and I loved it straight away.

“My parents said to me that, if I wanted to keep going to the boxing gym, I would have to pick up my grades at school and almost overnight my life was changed around. I guess that the sport of boxing can do this for a person. It certainly did for me.”

From his early days in the Palm Springs Boxing Club, Bradley’s father, Timothy Sr., a school district security officer, was a major influence, motivating him and making him earn his Christmas gifts, for instance, by insisting that he complete 500 pushups and 500 situps first. Gradually, the rebellious streak in Bradley’s nature became curbed, but the process was never easy. In second grade, he was kicked out of school because it seemed like every day a teacher would catch him fighting.

“I remember running into a woman a few years ago and she confronted me about an incident when I was little. I had flipped her off and called her a word that I would never repeat now and it was awful,” Bradley acknowledged, obviously embarrassed. “I said to her, ‘I said that? I’m so sorry, but I was a kid.’ I felt really, bad, but I had a totally different mindset as a kid. I was very short-tempered and I couldn’t control it. I don’t know why I was angry, because my parents always did the best that they possibly could for me. I was just a mean kid, a bully, that’s the only way I can explain it. It was only when I started boxing that I was able to control this side of my character.”

He had been a promising track athlete over 400 and 800 meters, but he excelled with the gloves on, winning a national title at the under-19 level as well as multiple Junior Olympic titles. His school grades improved and he gained entry to Northern Michigan University, where he studied to be a surgical technician. “I did two years at the university before I came back home for the 2004 Olympics and lost in the Box-offs,” he said. “I would have gone back and finished, too, but I witnessed a really bad car accident and saw something that I didn’t want to see, the victim’s stomach all over the steering wheel. I just happened to come upon the scene and I guess I changed my mind there and then on having any kind of medical career. One day I plan to go back to school and maybe I’ll study business, but for the moment, I am concentrating on my boxing career.”

With no marketing tool, such as an Olympic medal, to kick-start his career, Bradley struggled to make an immediate impact. Ken Thompson, a fledgling boxing promoter, signed him up, and Alex Camponovo, the matchmaker for Thompson Boxing Promotions, tried to showcase his talent, but Bradley got booed in his second pro bout at the Doubletree Hotel in Ontario, California, when he boxed and moved and stuck out his tongue at his opponent, Raul Nunez. “Timmy came back to the gym, worked on the development of his style and now he can fight any way he chooses,” said trainer Joel Diaz. “He can box against any guy out there, but he can bang them out, too, and that’s an irresistible combination.”

But his list of opponents remained unimpressive until a WBC eliminator at junior welterweight against former lightweight champion Jose Luis Castillo was scheduled to take place on March 8 in Cancun, Mexico. When Castillo failed to make weight, Bradley became Witter’s mandatory challenger and the collapse of a proposed bout between Witter and Demetrius Hopkins thrust him into a title fight and his first appearance outside of California.

For five rounds, the bout was anyone’s for the taking, but from the moment Bradley floored Witter with a powerful, looping right hand to the side of the head near the end of the sixth round, the issue never appeared to be in doubt, despite the judges rendering a split decision, 115-113 and 114-113 in favor of Bradley and 115-112 for Witter.

“This fight has changed everything for me because there are so many possibilities in the junior welterweight division,” said Bradley, 22-0 (11). “I could fight Witter in a rematch and that may happen, but I would also like to get a crack at Ricky Hatton. He’s a bully, he has the heart of a lion, and, if you can’t hit, he’ll be in your face all night. But I showed against Witter that I do punch hard, so Ricky is the fight I want. Paulie Malignaggi [the IBF titleholder] is going to fight him later in the year, but I see Hatton being too much for him. Malignaggi will only have a chance if he uses his legs. He has to outbox Hatton, but if he can’t stop the train, the train will run right over him.

“Me against Ricky would be a great fight because he’s always coming to you and I’m a machine. I’m out there to seek and destroy. I’m what you call a hunter.”

Witter was his unsuspecting prey in Nottingham, but when he next steps into the ring the heretofore unheralded hunter from Palm Springs will not go unnoticed.