By Dan Ambrose: WBO welterweight champion Tim Bradley (31-0, 12 KO’s) isn’t about to tell anyone that he’s interested in a big money bout against Floyd Mayweather Jr. (45-0, 26 KO’s), but it’s pretty obvious that Bradley badly wants the fight against Mayweather.
If Bradley gets past Manny Pacquiao next month in their fight on April 12th at the MGM Grand in Las, Nevada, Pacquiao won’t have much to look forward to other than a likely rematch against Juan Manuel Marquez in September, and that’s not a fight that will give Bradley a big payday.
“Mayweather is his own boss,” Bradley said. “If he wants to come see me, he can come see me. It’s how bad does Mayweather want to fight me.”
After Bradley loses to Manny Pacquiao next month, he’s going to look kind of silly saying Mayweather can get in his lane anytime he wants to if he wants to fight him. Once Bradley’s ‘0’ is one, there won’t be any interest in being the first one to beat him anymore. Bradley dodged a bullet twice with his controversial decision win over Pacquiao in 2012, and very close win over Ruslan Provodnikov last year. But I have a feeling that Bradley’s luck will run out against Pacquiao on April 12th, and at that point Bradley is going to need to be satisfied with fighting the likes of Mike Alvarado and Brandon Rios for the remaining years of his length contract with Top Rank.
Bradley recently re-signed a lengthy contract with Top Rank which will last for the remainder of Bradley’s prime. Mayweather will be long retired by the time Bradley’s contract with Top Rank expires, and that’s if they don’t eventually terminate the contract if and when Bradley’s career tanks at some point, possibly soon once he starts losing to Pacquiao and other fighters in the Top Rank stable.
Mayweather is not going to volunteer to fight Bradley now that he re-signed with Top Rank, and if Bradley doesn’t know that now then he’s going to find that out when Mayweather shows no interest in fighting him in 2014 and 2015.
The problem that Bradley has is he’s not a big ticket seller and he doesn’t bring in the pay-per-view buys, so even if he wasn’t with Top Rank, he would be someone that would be similar to Mayweather’s fight against Robert Guerrero. In other words, Bradley isn’t popular enough for Mayweather to be able to bring in a lot of fans or PPV buys unless Golden Boy were to stack the undercard with important fights to make up for what Bradley doesn’t bring to the table.
The Pacquiao-Bradley 2 fight may bring in decent PPV numbers, but that’s only going to be because of Pacquiao. He’s going to be the one that brings in the numbers all by himself. Bradley will be the B side and will benefit from Pacquiao bringing in the buys. But if you put Bradley on his own PPV without guys like Pacquiao, Marquez and Mayweather, then he’s probably not going to be able to bring in even 100,000 PPVs.
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