Pacquiao v Bradley: Counting punches

Pacquiao (right) was widely thought to have won the fight

Earlier this month, Manny Pacquiao, a man many feel is the world's best boxer, lost in a split decision to unbeaten American Timothy Bradley. But now a World Boxing Organisation review says Pacquiao should have been declared the winner. Why has this fight been so controversial? The answer lies in the statistics.

As soon as the fighting ended at the MGM Grand on 9 June, the general consensus of those watching was that the Filipino boxing champion Manny Pacquiao had won.
Before the judges had been able to give their scores, Timothy Bradley is reported to have told his promoter: "I tried hard but I couldn't beat the guy."
But when the scores were announced, it turned out that two of the three judges thought Bradley had beaten Pacquiao, and their opinion carried the result, which meant Pacquiao lost his WBO welterweight title to Bradley.
"Everybody was just pretty much in shock. There was a lot of booing from the crowd, it was obviously a pro-Pacquiao crowd. But mostly, I think everybody was pretty stunned," says Bob Canobbio, who was sitting crunching numbers from the ringside of the fight.
His business CompuBox analyses boxing statistics.

Looking at this fight, Canobbio found that Pacquiao landed more punches in 10 of the 12 rounds.

Overall, Pacquiao landed 253 punches to Bradley's total of 159.
But Canobbio and his team also analysed the type of punches thrown.
"A fighter could land less punches in a fight, but if he is landing the harder punches you could justify him winning rounds and winning the fight."

Manila fell silent when Pacquiao was declared the loser

So the Compubox system also counts power punches. These are the punches that can do the damage in a fight including hooks, uppercuts and straight rights not the jabs.
When they broke down the numbers, they found that Pacquiao was still on top.
Although Timothy Bradley threw more punches, less than 20% of them actually connected. Pacquiao was more accurate, especially with his power punches. He landed 190 power punches to Bradley's 108.