Wednesday, March 5, 1997 | 11:59 a.m.
Otis Grant thought he won the fight and Lonnie Bradley was happy to settle for a draw, but that didn't prevent Grant from visiting Bradley's dressing room to exchange hugs.
Both men graciously congratulated each other following Tuesday night's main event at the Aladdin, their hard-to-score fight ending dead even in the judges' eyes.
Bradley was able to retain his WBO middleweight title on the strength of building an early lead -- and taking the 12th and final round. Grant, conversely, was dominant for a lengthy stretch in the middle of the nationally televised fight.
"I thought I hurt him more than he hurt me," Grant said. "I thought I was three or four rounds (ahead) before the 12th."
Every round was close and there were no knockdowns, although Grant staggered Bradley with a left in the fourth. One judge, Dale Grable, had it 114-114; another judge, Chuck Giampa, gave the edge to Grant, 115-113; and the third judge, Bill Graham, favored Bradley, 115-113. The three-way split goes down as a draw. (The SUN had it 115-113 for Grant.)
"I thought (the scoring) was pretty efficient," Bradley said. "It was a chess match."
As chess matches go, it was a good one.
"The corner told me he was there for the left but he wasn't a stationary target," Grant said. "He was hard to hit clean."
Grant's southpaw style troubled Bradley, who was having a difficult time defending the left. If the two fight again, as frequently happens after a draw like this, Grant undoubtedly will be told to throw the left more often -- because when he did, it scored.
"I didn't want to blow my load," Grant said by way of explaining why he didn't effectively follow up after hurting Bradley in the fourth. "I didn't want to throw my game plan in the garbage if I couldn't get him out."
Then, retrospect taking hold, he added: "Maybe I should have rushed him."
But he felt he handled the fight strategically and as he was instructed. "I figured if I was aggressive from the outset, he'd just jump on his bike," Grant said in an assessment that had a ring of truth to it.
By the time the bout got to the wire, Bradley was looking for something big to counter the very real fear that he was losing. And the crowd, docile at the outset, was thoroughly entertained.
"I was trying to get a 'Hail Mary' across," Bradley said of his final-round disposition. "But he was fighting a safety-first fight."
The draw was the first blemish of any sort on Bradley's record, now 25-0-1. Grant, who originally was going to have this fight in his "backyard" of Montreal until a scheduling problem moved the card to Las Vegas, is 28-1-1.
In a similar though more decisive preliminary fight, Steve Martinez won the vacant NABF junior middleweight title with a decision over a surprisingly competitive Warren Williams. Martinez, 34-1-1, took the fight by 6, 4 and 4 points on the judges' cards over the 13-8-1 Williams.
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