By Michael Lieberman: Gary Shaw, the promoter for WBO light welterweight champion Timothy Bradley (27-0, 11 KO’s), says that they are considering fights with Amir Khan, Marcos Maidana or Floyd Mayweather Jr. in terms of Bradley’s next fight. You can pretty exclude Khan and Mayweather from that list immediately, because Khan has a fight already scheduled for April and won’t be available to fight Bradley until at least July at the minimum. And Mayweather is busy dealing with legal problems and that will likely keep him tied up for awhile, possibly for the remainder of the year.

That leaves Maidana. It was thought previously that the rematch clause that Devon Alexadner had would force Bradley to have to fight him in his next fight or soon after. However, Shaw says that the rematch is up to HBO. If they want the second fight, then it will happen. If not, then Shaw and Bradley will move on and look for other top fighters to take on, such as Mayweather, Maidana and Khan. Those are the three fighters that Shaw is mentioning for Bradley’s next fight.

Speaking with Greg Leon at boxingtalk.com, Shaw said “It’s not a normal rematch clause because we’re not tied in to do the rematch. It’s up to HBO to say if they want the rematch or not. I believe at this point we will move on to different fighters whether it’s Amir Khan, Marcos Maidana or Floyd Mayweather.”

Mayweather is the most ideal opponent, but that’s not realistic. It’s more of a pipe dream for Shaw and Bradley at this point, although I think Mayweather would jump at the chance to get an easy money fight like Bradley. However, I doubt he would want to take on someone without a huge fan base like Bradley. Mayweather would want to obviously face someone like Khan, who has a lot of fans worldwide rather than someone like Bradley.

Maidana would be a really tough fight for Bradley because he’s a lot stronger than the guys Bradley has been facing and he takes a punch really well. Bradley isn’t much of a puncher, so it would be a very hard fight for Bradley because he likes to fight in close so much. It might be the wrong fight for Bradley. Maidana seems to do well against fighters like Bradley that stand in front of him. This could be the equivalent of Maidana destroying Victor Cayo.

There’s no secret that HBO is really high on Maidana, and I think they will much prefer Bradley facing Maidana next rather than wasting Maidana on taking on Alexander. That fight was something that had been mentioned but because of how poorly Alexander fought against Bradley, HBO will probably want to waste time matching Maidana against Alexander. It would likely be much worse than watching Bradley go after the reluctant Alexander. Maidana might end up chasing Alexander around the ring all night and making for a boring fight. Maidana is the ideal opponent for Bradley until the Khan fight can happen later on in the year. The problem is Bradley might not make it past Maidana.