LAS VEGAS -- How will trainer Teddy Atlas feel if Timothy Bradley Jr. loses his fight to Manny Pacquiao on Saturday night?
"I'm afraid to even tell you," Atlas says.
But after a pause, he does: "I feel like I'd rather die."
If you know Atlas, or just know of him from his work on ESPN's boxing telecasts, or the legends that have grown out of his confrontation with a young Mike Tyson more than 30 years ago, you know he is not kidding.
And you understand that if you are going to plunk down about $60 to watch Pacquiao and Bradley fight for a third time -- Atlas will be nearly as entertaining as either of the two fighters.
Let's face it, we've seen this movie before. Twice, in fact. Pacquiao and Bradley have already fought 24 rounds against each other, and they've spent the equivalent of an hour and a half in close company.
And while they produced two good fights, a third match between them was never going to be the Thrilla in Manila.
Enter the Teddy Factor.
"Nothing is more important than what this fight means to Timmy and his family, and to me and my family. Nothing is more important than not seeing Timmy's family crying, and not seeing my family crying. Nothing is more important than not seeing Timmy lose." Teddy Atlas
He is the variable in this fight, the wild card, the only element in this rubber match that raises the possibility of seeing something truly different from what otherwise might have seemed like a tired act.
Namely, can Atlas make enough of a difference in Tim Bradley to help him earn a victory in the most important fight of his career?
Bradley believes he can. Atlas, true to his nature, won't be sure until the final bell rings.
"My job's not done until we win the fight," he said, knowing full well that in boxing, everything can go right in camp but still go horribly wrong on fight night.
"I love this kid," Atlas said. "I never wanted to love a fighter. It's a cardinal sin. Cus told me you're never supposed to."
Cus, of course, is Cus D'Amato, the legendarily quirky trainer who shaped Atlas the trainer as much as his father, Dr. Theodore A. Atlas, shaped Atlas the man.
Molded under D'Amato's influence, Atlas brings his unique blend of Sigmund Freud and the Marine drill sergeant from "Full Metal Jacket" to every training camp, and on fight night, Atlas can be depended upon to provide at least one moment of compelling between-rounds motivational speaking.
And in addition to the question of whether he can improve the 32-year-old Bradley enough to make him a winner in his rubber match with one of the greatest lower-weight-class champions ever, Atlas' presence brings an added attraction: a simmering feud with Freddie Roach, his counterpart in Pacquiao's corner.
That feud threatened to bust wide open on Thursday, when Roach, first in a radio interview and later to ESPN.com, accused Atlas of having two men pull guns on him in a New York hotel lobby in 1997 to prevent Roach from breaking a fistfight between Atlas and a boxing manager.
The details are complicated and sketchy after nearly two decades -- I was present at the incident, and while Atlas and John Davimos did come to blows, there were no guns to be seen in my presence -- but a fight between the two trainers might be even more entertaining than the main event.
"My job's not done until we win the fight. I love this kid. I never wanted to love a fighter. It's a cardinal sin." Teddy Atlas
That is a prospect Atlas won't even consider. He has tried to avoid a war of words with Roach, and refuses to acknowledge that the enmity between the two trainers will serve as anything more than a sideshow to the main attraction.
Atlas arrived at training camp with eight pages of annotated notes corresponding to tapes of Bradley's fights, identifying flaws in his style that needed correction.
Simply put, Atlas has worked to alter Bradley in subtle ways, to maintain what he calls Bradley's warrior mentality while economizing his style, shortening his punches and eliminating a lot of the superfluous motion that he believes has caused Bradley to get hit with unnecessary punches.
Atlas has also identified four "tells" in Pacquiao's style that he says can tip off an opponent as to when he is about to unleash one of his trademark flurries. The trainer likens these tip-offs to the gathering of clouds before a hurricane.
"We need to see the darkness of that sky and recognize it," Atlas said.
One of Pacquiao's "tells" is the southpaw's tendency to lean his head to the right before unleashing his straight left, a misdirection move that Atlas says can be countered by Bradley's left. The others he prefers to keep secret, for fear that Pacquiao's camp will learn about it and make the necessary adjustments.
"The main thing is to give him as defined an identity as possible when he gets in the ring," said Atlas, referring to Bradley's tendency to flip-flop between styles within a fight and even a round. "I don't want him being Jake LaMotta one minute and Pernell Whitaker the next."
Bradley has bought into every word of it, and when he heard about Roach's accusation about Atlas on Thursday afternoon, Bradley came down to meet his trainer -- he calls Atlas "coach" -- in a hallway of the MGM Grand, where for a moment, boxer and trainer switched roles.
"Coach, we gotta be cool," Bradley said, his hands on Atlas' shoulders and their eyes locked. "We gotta be chill. We just gotta be like, 'nothing fazes us. Nothing fazes us. Nothing.' You know who you are. You're the best in the world."
Then he walked away.
"Is that a special kid or what?," Atlas said. "He's in a great place. We did everything we needed to do. We got to the right place physically, the right place mentally, the right place as far as learning the strategy. We're right there. Now we just got to do it.
"Now you know why I can never sleep during training camp."
For both fighter and trainer, the only thing at stake Saturday night is everything.