(Photo credit: HBO/Will HartBy Eric Thomas: WBO welterweight champion Tim Bradley (30-0, 12 KO’s) weighed in 1.5 lbs. more than Juan Manuel Marquez (55-6-1, 40 KO’s) during Friday’s weight for Saturday’s pay-per-view fight on HBO. Bradley weighed in at 146 lbs, whereas Marquez came in at 144.5 lbs.
This is really not much of a surprise because Bradley has become quite heavy in between fights, and he’s been fighting at 147 for a lot longer than Marquez.
The real test is how well Bradley moves around the ring on Saturday night, as he’s going to need his foot speed to keep from getting nailed by Marquez’s big hooks and uppercuts. Bradley was hurt badly in his last fight against Ruslan Provodnikov 7 months ago, and he wants to limit the amount of hard punches he absorbs from Marquez in this fight. There’s a chance that Bradley’s chin isn’t what it was before and this could mean that he’ll be in trouble if Marquez can hit him with a hard enough shot.
Marquez defeated Manny Pacquiao by a 6th round knockout last December in what has to be the biggest victory of Marquez’s career.
For Marquez to beat Bradley, he’s going to have to cut off the ring because Bradley has already said that he plans on boxing Marquez using in and out movement to keep from getting hit. Marquez will need to cut off the ring and time Bradley for when he launches his attacks.
***
In the undercard, Orlando Salido (39-12-2, 27 KO’s) weighed in at 126 lbs. for his fight against Orlando Cruz (20-2-1, 10 KO’s) for the vacant WBO featherweight title. Cruz weighed 125 lbs. It’s going to be a hard fight for Salido, who is coming off of an 8th round technical decision defeat the hands of Mikey Garcia last January. Salido was susceptible to Garcia’s big punches in that fight and he ended up getting knocked down 4 times by Mikey until the fight was stopped in the 8th after a head-butt broke Mikey’s nose.
Cruz, 32, has won his last 4 fights after being stopped in the 3rd round by Daniel Ponce De Leon in 2010.
Comments are closed.