Today's edition of Las Vegas's daily rag has this quote from judge Duane Ford: "I thought Bradley gave Pacquiao a boxing lesson. I thought a lot of the rounds were close. Pacquiao missed a lot of punches and I thought he was throwing wildly."
There's an article on the fight on the front page and two more in the sports section. The theme is that though the decision was controversial, it's no big deal. In fact sports page columnist Ron Kantowski ends his puff piece with this: "The next time probably will be in November, at the rematch, and everybody will be talking about it, and a lot of people will cough up $54.95 to watch it on pay per view though the economy stinks, though they say they've had it with boxing. That is why boxing shold be sending [judges] C.J. Ross and Duane Ford and Jerry Roth flowers."
Kantowski spends much of his article comparing the decision to many other famous bad calls, such as umpire Jim Joyce costing Armando Galarraga a perfect game, or Don Denkinger's blown call in the 1985 World Series, Michael Jordan pushing off on Bryon Russell, 12 year old Jeffrey Maier reaching over the fence to catch a fly ball before the Orioles right fielder could catch it, etc. But those were all single, split-second incidents, not a case of two judges watching a 12 round fight and getting it incredibly wrong. Big difference. But then again, the Vegas media cheerleads for the local and national establishment all the time, similar to the media in all big cities.
One very telling tidbit from today's sports page about just how atrocious the decision was: on live wagering, Bradley was at 100 to 1 odds to win going into the 12th round.