Tim Bradley vs. Jessie Vargas to fight for interim WBO 147lb title

By Boxing News - 06/22/2015 - Comments

bradley73By Dan Ambrose: Tim Bradley (31-1-1, 12 KOs) and Jessie Vargas (26-0, 9 KOs) will be fighting for the WBO interim welterweight title this Saturday night on June 27th at the StubHub Center in Carson, California.

The WBO interim title could turn into the full WBO title if Floyd Mayweather Jr., the current WBO 147lb champion, fails to send the World Boxing Organization a $200,000 sanctioning fee for the strap after he beat Manny Pacquiao on May 2nd of last month, according to Fight News.

Additionally, Mayweather will need to vacate his shoot a letter to the WBO telling them that he’ll be vacating his WBA and WBC junior middleweight titles. Just why the WBO would care about Mayweather having those titles is unclear. Mayweather has until July 3rd to fulfill those two requests by the WBO.

I’m not sure that Mayweather values the WBO title enough to want to give them $200K just so that he can keep the strap. Mayweather said already that he wants to vacate all of his titles and let Errol Spence, one of his top fighters in his Mayweather Promotions stable, fight for them.

If Mayweather pays the $200 grand and gives up his junior middleweight titles, which he apparently has no intentions of defending, he can give up the titles and have some of them available for Spence to fight for. However, it looks like the WBO will make sure that the winner of the Bradley-Vargas fight immediately picks up the WBO title once Mayweather relinquishes it. Just so you know, Bradley and Vargas are backed by the high powered promotional company Top Rank, so it makes sense for the WBO to be clearing the way for one of them to pick up the WBO title.

The chances of the Bradley-Vargas winner holding onto the WBO title for a long time is extremely remove. Neither of them are impressive fighters, and both of them would likely lose to the top welterweights like Amir Khan, Danny Garcia, Kell Brook, Keith Thurman and Errol Spence. All of those fighters would likely do a job on the winner of the Bradley vs. Vargas affair. However, with the WBO’s ranking, it’s not likely that any of those fighters will ever face Bradley or Vargas.

None of them are with Top Rank, so it’s possible that the winner of the Bradley vs. Vargas fight will be able to sit on the title and defend it against the likes of other Top Rank fighters like Brandon Rios and Terence Crawford. You can make a strong argument that the Bradley vs. Vargas winner will merely keep the WBO title warm until Crawford moves up to 147 to fight for the strap, or maybe Manny Pacquiao. It wouldn’t be surprising if that’s what the WBO is hoping will happen.

No.3 WBO Sadam Ali will be fighting the winner of the Bradley-Vargas fight. Ali is a decent fighter, but he’s likely going to come up empty against the winner of that fight. For some strange reason the WBO still has Juan Manuel Marquez ranked at No.2 despite the fact that he hasn’t fought in over a year, and the chances of him fighting again are slim. The WBO would be better off removing him from their top 15 ranking so that someone else can get a shot. Brandon Rios is ranked No.4 by the WBO, so he’ll likely be getting a shot at the title in 2016 if not sooner.

The WBO’s rankings are really poor for the welterweight division in my view. They have a lot of weak contenders that don’t rate in my view, and they don’t include top fighters like Marcos Maidana, Shawn Porter, Amir Khan and Errol Spence.



Comments are closed.