By Dan Ambrose: Since it was announced the scheduled November 12th fight between WBO light welterweight champion Timothy Bradley (27-0, 11 KO’s) and 40-year-old former two division world champion Joel Casamayor (38-5-1, 22 KO’s) has been criticized by many boxing fans who are badly disappointed that such an old and struggling fighter like Casamayor would be picked to challenge for a title against the champion Bradley.

To be sure, it’s not everyday that you see a fighter that’s lost two out of their last four fights being picked to fight a champion. However, Top Rank promoter Bob Arum wanted this fight for his newly signed fighter Bradley, and that’s how it’s going to be.

Arum said this to ESPN: “Who cares what they [the fans] say. We thought it was a good fight for Tim given the layoff. We went to [Richard] Schaefer to see if we could get [Marcos] Maidana and [Schaefer] wasn’t interested.”

The problem with choosing the 40-year-old Casamayor to fight Bradley is that Casamayor isn’t even ranked in the top 15 anywhere. He’s a 2nd tier fighter at this stage in his career and champions usually fight 1st tier fighters, even when taking optional title defenses. They’ll pick from the very bottom of the 1st tier, but at least it’s technically a 1st tier fighter. But in Casamayor’s case, he’s no longer ranked in the top 15, and basically this is mismatch.

It’s true that Bradley hasn’t fought for a while since beating Devon Alexander last January. However, he’s fighting on a pay per view card, and that should mean that he’s matched up against a quality fighter in the top 15 given that boxing fans are paying in part to see him fight. Arum may not care what boxing fans think, but he really should. After all, if he’s trying to make a star out of Bradley then how is it a good thing that he’s matching him up against a 40-year-old fighter?