By Scott Gilfoid: Isn’t it interesting how things have turned around for WBO light welterweight champion Timothy Bradley? He’s been taking heat from the media for the past five months for ignoring requests from WBA light welterweight champion Amir Khan for a fight that would have given Bradley a small payday of only $1.2 million.

But instead of taking that fight for that low money, Bradley is getting the same amount of cash for his fight against former world champion Joel Casamayor on November 12th. And the best part of all, Bradley is being positioned for a fight against Manny Pacquiao in early 2012 with his high visibility fight on the undercard of Pacquiao vs. Juan Manuel Marquez III in November.

The Pacquiao fight will give Bradley a likely payday of $5 million+. Not bad for a fighter that was being asked to take a much smaller payday against Khan in a fight that really was much too soon for it to be a huge PPV bout that Bradley wanted it to be. You see, Bradley not only thinks like a fighter but he also thinks like a promoter. He’s got a head on his shoulders and sees things from a wider perspective that close-minded people can’t really understand.

Bradley tried to tell people that it wasn’t good for him to whip Devon Alexander last January, that the fight needed more time to build up and marinate before making it happen. Instead, Bradley reluctantly gave in and took the fight, earning a lot less than he would have made had the fight taken place in a year or two later. But Bradley wasn’t going to make that same mistake twice by accepting the small money to fight Khan in 2011, when the fight can be huge in 2012 or 2013. Now Bradley is in the envious position of getting a fight against Pacquiao next year, as long as Bradley takes care of business against the 40-year-old Casamayor on November 12th.

And what of Khan? Well, he has to settle for taking on Lamont Peterson, his number #1 IBF mandatory challenger, on December 10th in Washington, DC. That’s not going to be anywhere close to being a big money fight for Khan, because Peterson isn’t a huge star. Khan would be better off taking rematches against Marcos Maidana and/or Breidis Prescott, two fighters that the boxing public are practically begging Khan to fight again. Those guys can punch, and are being ignored by Khan, even though they would mean big audiences for him. How sad. Khan settles for less.