Timothy Bradley, Brandon Rios meet for title after making massive changes

LAS VEGAS – It was eerily similar, listening to Brandon Rios and Timothy Bradley loosen the cap on their emotions, confess to past transgressions, vow to improve and discuss a radically new approach to work and life.

They sat in the same booth in the same vacant restaurant and said largely the same things, separated only by 30 minutes and the differences in their personalities.

Rios has always been the life of the party, the guy who loved to joke except when it's time to fight. Few love a fight as much as Rios, whose countenance instantly switches from devilish grin to angry sneer whenever it's time for battle.

Bradley is the perpetual Father of the Year candidate, an easy-going guy always loyal to a fault who, for the sake of his career, realized he had to part ways with one of his closest mentors.

They've arrived in Las Vegas with an eye on the same goal. They meet on Saturday in front of an HBO television audience for the WBO welterweight title at the Thomas & Mack Center on the UNLV campus, though the real prize is something a bit more elusive:

Redemption.

Rios, inching closer to 30, has done many good things in boxing. He won his first 18 fights and, after a controversial draw, reeled off another 13 wins in a row before finally losing. He won a lightweight world championship and became a popular television attraction.

When he got his big chance, though, a 2013 pay-per-view bout in China against Manny Pacquiao, he blew it.

Rios wasn't bothered simply by the loss – Pacquiao is a special fighter, one of the greatest of his generation, and there is no shame in being beaten by him.

Instead, Rios is troubled by the transformation that overcame him once he landed that bout.

"You reach a point in your career when you mature, stop being a little kid and think of the future," Rios said. "That's what happened. My wife and I, we talked about it. I was like, 'This is it,' after the Pacquiao fight. 'This is it.' I'm going back to what I love doing, what I did when I started."

The fire that had fueled him on his rise flickered and then extinguished during his training camp for Pacquiao. He said his diet and his camp didn't go as it should have.

It was the biggest fight of his career, the largest payday by far, but he got comfortable.

"I got big-headed and stupid," he said. "I was making a lot of money as a young kid. I never had money before, and that had a lot to do with it. I just had to re-light the fire that has always been in me, that's been in my heart. I love this sport so much and so I kicked all the negative people away from me and just kept the positive people who have been with me since Day 1."

He hired a personal chef to help him eat properly and counsel him on the pitfalls of fast food or shopping at a convenience store. He hired the highly respected Darryl Hudson as his strength and conditioning coach.

He pruned the team and even moved his training camp from Oxnard, Calif., where it eventually became difficult to get work in with all the visitors and back slappers who made their way to the gym and where distractions abounded, to Riverside, Calif.

He rented a house in Riverside next to the gym so he didn't have the temptation of hitting the drive through or making a run to the 7-11 and loading up on junk food.

"Use your imagination," he said when asked to explain what he'd eat on those days. "Go wild with it."

He's a massive underdog vs. Bradley, but believes his new approach will pay dividends.

In that regard, so too does Bradley, who made the difficult decision in the summer to part ways with Joel Diaz, his longtime friend and the only trainer he'd known in his professional career.

It's been two years since Bradley left the ring completely satisfied, since his 2013 victory over the great Juan Manuel Marquez in the very ring where he'll meet Rios on Saturday.

Since, he lost to Pacquiao in their rematch, got a bitterly disputed split draw with Diego Chaves and then survived a last-minute rally from Jessie Vargas to win the WBO belt in June.

He was animated as he spoke with the media for a half-hour on Wednesday, raving about his relationship with new trainer Teddy Atlas and about the new direction he believes his career is headed.

He was nearly knocked out in the waning seconds by Vargas and had to take stock of himself.

"I've accomplished a lot in boxing – How do I say this? – but as I'm getting older and I take a look at my kids and my family, I said, 'You know what, man? I know I'm getting better. I know I can get better. I know this isn't it,' " he said.

After he survived that near-disastrous finish to the Vargas fight, he had one last obligation. Atlas and veteran journalist Wally Matthews were doing a radio show on Sirius and wanted to talk to him.

Bradley's done thousands of interviews during his career, and this was the only one that would lead to such profound changes.

"I don't know if it was a calling from God or what it was," Bradley said. "I don't know. But I'd never done an interview with Mr. Teddy Atlas. Never. Never once done a phone interview, TV, a radio interview with him. Nothing. But it just so happened after the Jessie Vargas fight, that's what happened, an interview with Teddy."

Atlas asked him about the fight, and why he got hit with certain punches, and how he should have reacted to what Vargas was doing.

As Atlas went through his questions, Bradley came to a realization: He didn't know the answers.

"He told me to go back and look at Round 1, Round 6, Round 9, Round 11 and Round 12, and I was like, 'OK, but what am I looking for?' " Bradley asked. "And he goes, 'You're right directly in front of the guy and you rolled your shoulders back. That's telegraphing the right hand.' He goes, 'A punch isn't even coming at you and you're rolling your shoulders back. I don't know what you call that, the [Floyd] Mayweather, the fake Mayweather, whatever. I don't know what you call it. But mechanically, that's not what you're supposed to do, sit there in front of a guy and telegraph a punch.' "

Atlas told Bradley that he called those kinds of mistake mortal sins. And for an elite fighter, Bradley was making a lot of mortal sins.

He hung up the phone and had a conversation with his wife, Monica, who also serves as his manager, about what Atlas said.

"This was a man who was not my trainer and he was so detailed in his conversation and so ready with what he wanted to tell me," Bradley said. "He knew what he wanted to tell me and why, and he wasn't even my trainer. I was like, 'Something is wrong here. Something is completely wrong here.' And so I said to her, 'What am I going to do when I go back to the gym to start training for my next fight? Start cutting weight. Start hitting the bag. Go back and hit the hand mitts the same way. Are there any corrections going to be made?'

"That's what I started thinking and wondering if [Diaz and I] were going to correct anything. I thought back to my other camps. I said, 'No, when I got hit with that shot, no corrections were made. When I got hit with this one, no, no corrections were made.' And so that's when I told my wife I wanted Teddy to train me."

Bradley has fully embraced Atlas' preaching. Forget the tough-guy nonsense; don't try to prove you have a great chin. The message was simple: Don't get hit with those punches in the first place. Boxing is a game of hit but don't be hit.

Tim Bradley Sr. is a constant presence in his son's camp. A high school security officer, he keeps a watchful eye on his son's work. The other day, at the conclusion of a sparring session, Bradley caught a glimpse of his father.

There was a tear in the old man's eye, so overjoyed was he by the work of his son.

So Bradley and Rios move inexorably toward their showdown, a fight that will have significant implications in the division.

"That was one of the most incredible things I've seen," promoter Bob Arum said after listening to both Rios and Bradley speak to the media. "They laid their hearts out there."

They've always laid their hearts out in the ring. But now, they've changed. They're still warriors, still tough guys, still no one to trifle with or dismiss out of hand.

They've each realized, though, that boxing is as much a mental exercise as it is a physical one. The winner, they've come to understand, isn't necessarily the scariest or the strongest.

It's usually the smartest.

And Rios and Bradley each insist they're a lot smarter now about their careers than they've ever been before.

So, on Saturday, may the wisest man win.