Removing the emotion from this... is this as horrible a decision as people make out?

Problem is, you don't score a "fight" - you score round by round, so if a fighter goes quiet in a number of rounds and the other fighter is more active, even if he's not as effective and even if he's dominated in the rounds he loses, you open yourself up to lose this sort of decision.

Look no further than Bernard Hopkins as a guy who looked beautiful in 2-3 rounds against Calzaghe and in 3-4 rounds against Jermain Taylor but ultimately lazy across the other rounds and therefore gave away the decision.

It's not about who wins their rounds with the most dominance, if Pacquaio was that dominant he'd have dropped Bradley and got himself the 10-8 rounds that would stack up against Pacquaio. With exception to maybe the fourth round, where Pacquaio rocked Bradley quite badly, I don't recall any stage in the fight where I thought Bradley was about to be knocked down, let alone knocked out - his face after the fight when compared against any fighter who has recently fought Pacquaio (ODLH, Margarito, Cotto, Marquez) also tells a story that maybe Pacquaio wasn't landing cleanly on Bradley.

The ten point must system is meant to make fighters fight every single round in a fight, knowing that no such thing as a drawn round exists (in most judges scorecards)

While a 116-112 scorecard can be clear and decisive, in the case when there are two swing rounds that could go the other way, it's not clear and decisive. For all the vitriol and emotion surrounding this, I don't feel Pacquaio was a dominant 116-112 winner, just a guy who probably did enough to get the 116-112.

Forgetting what the judges scored, because giving Round 5 to Bradley is a ****ing joke.... I wouldn't hold it against a judge if they scored 1, 2, 9, 10, 11, 12 to Bradley and swung either Round 3 or Round 8 against Pacquaio based on activity for Bradley and a lack of dominance evident in say 4, 5, 6 and 7 in favour of Pacquaio. I'd actually go back on you scoring it a decisive Round 9 performance for Pacquaio and ask you to watch it again, Bradley does some of his best work in that round, lands a lot of punches to the body and to the head and often presses Pacquaio back after each flurry. I felt Round 9 was what gave Bradley the confidence going into 10, 11 and 12 because before that, I had a feeling he was just going through the motions and then he picked his game back up.

Therefore I -can- see how someone could feasibly get to a 115-113 result for Bradley. It's not the result I give because I think Pacquaio made the action in Round 3 and Round 8 and like I say, I also gave him swing rounds in 2 and 9.... but ultimately, this isn't the highway robbery people are making out

I think someone else summed it up best. Unofficially, Pacquaio is 1-1 in his last two fights. Officially, he's also 1-1 in his last two fights, just a shame the wrong guy got the W. I call this a bad decision due to it going in favour of a guy who at best should have got a draw, but I wouldn't have called a draw a bad decision on the basis of the fight.