By Keith Idec

Timothy Bradley is much more confident in his game plan for his third fight against Manny Pacquiao than he was before their first two fights.

The once-beaten fighter was trained by Joel Diaz for nearly his entire career. They parted ways last September and there are conflicting stories (from both sides) on what actually led to the split.

Bradley took a swipe at his old trainer when he admitted during a conference call Wednesday he didn’t have much of a game plan at all for the first two fights with Pacquiao – an infamous split-decision win in June 2012 and a clear unanimous-decision defeat in April 2014. According to Bradley (33-1-1, 13 KOs, 1 NC), new trainer Teddy Atlas has devised an enhanced, detail-oriented strategy for his April 9 rubber match against Pacquiao (57-6-2, 38 KOs) at MGM Grand in Las Vegas.

“The difference this time around is that I have a game plan,” Bradley said. “I really do have a game plan. … The game plan for the first fight was to avoid the left hand. That was it. There was really nothing else to it. Avoid the left hand, hit him with a right hand.

“But this game plan is a little more in detail and there’s a lot of things that Manny Pacquiao does that I can take advantage of. There’s a lot of things that I didn’t see before in watching film and breaking film down that Teddy has brought to my attention. So I feel this is going to be a completely different fight than the first two.”

That said, Bradley completely understands that if he doesn’t follow Atlas’ instructions, the result of his third fight against the powerful Filipino southpaw won’t be much different than their first two encounters. 

“We’ve got the game plan for what I have to do,” Bradley said. “I just have to go out there and execute the game plan, just like I did against [Brandon] Rios. If I execute the game plan I should have no problem beating Manny Pacquiao, just like I was able to beat Rios with the game plan.

“So I trust everything Teddy is telling me and teaching me. It’s all about executing the game plan from here, if I go out there and do my job. Teddy can instill everything that I need for the fight and show me everything that I need to win this fight. But if I don’t go out there and do it, then I’m not gonna win this fight.”

Keith Idec covers boxing for The Record and Herald News, of Woodland Park, N.J., and BoxingScene.com. He can be reached on Twitter @Idecboxing.