Bradley believes Atlas will have him ready for Rios

By Boxing News - 09/17/2015 - Comments

bradley6778By Dan Ambrose: WBO welterweight title holder Timothy Bradley (32-1-1, 12 KOs) thinks that the addition of trainer Teddy Atlas to his team will help get him ready for anything that challenger Brandon Rios (33-2-1, 23 KOs) brings to the table on November 7th in their fight on HBO Championship Boxing from the Mandalay Bay Resort & Casino in Las Vegas, Nevada.

At Wednesday’s kick off news conference Bradley and Rios talked about their upcoming fight. Bradley recently switched out Atlas for Joel Diaz as his trainer. Bradley thinks that the well-spoken Atlas can help fix the holes in his game.

Whether Atlas can do that or not is unknown. What could be a lingering problem for Bradley is his lack of punching power. He’s not really designed to be fighting in the 147lb division, as he didn’t care his power up with him when he moved up in weight from the light welterweight [140lb] division in 2012. Bradley wasn’t a big puncher at 140 either.

The only reason he was able to do well at 140 was because of his hand speed, which was better than most of the opponents he faced. At 147, Bradley is succeeding well due in part to the match-making that’s being done for him by his promoters at Top Rank, and the number of different welterweight titles to fight for.

If there was only one or two welterweight titles to fight for, Bradley would likely be out of luck because he would be over his head against a big puncher like Kell Brook, Keith Thurman, Shawn Porter, Marcos Maidana or Danny Garcia. But all Bradley had to do to win the WBO title was beat fellow Top Rank fighter Jessie Vargas, who moved up in weight from 140 to fight Bradley. Vargas isn’t a puncher either, so it made the job easier for Bradley.

“I understand that Brandon is going to be ready for this fight, but you know me,” Bradley said at the press conference as quoted by Fight News. “I embrace a challenge and I know it’s going to be a challenge on November 7. Under the new guidance of Teddy Atlas and my work ethic, I think we’re going to come out of camp and be in tremendous shape for this fight because there is no other way to be – especially for a guy like Brandon Rios.”

I don’t think it really matters what areas of Bradley’s game Atlas changes for this fight. Ultimately, Bradley is going to remain a weak puncher for the division, and his chin is going to be just as vulnerable now as it was before in his past fights. If anything, Bradley’s punch resistance might even be less than it was before because he was badly hurt in his last fight against Vargas in the 12th round.

Bradley was pretty well shook up by that right hand, and he’s just lucky that Vargas doesn’t have the kind of punching power to throw with major power with every shot. Had Bradley been hurt by a big puncher, he would have been in trouble in the last round. But then again, I think Bradley would have been hurt much earlier in the fight than the 12th round against a puncher like Garcia, Maidana, Porter, Thurman or Errol Spence.

Bradley has a good thing going by being with Top Rank. They’re going to make sure that they put him in winnable fights, and not match him against Maidana, Porter, Thurman or Garcia. I don’t see any of those fights ever happening because those are Al Haymon fighters.

“I’m ready to fight. I probably wasn’t on their list, but I’m here now I’m ready to go. I will be well prepared and you will see the best Brandon Rios as you did against Alvarado,” Rios said.

Rios wanted a fight against Kell Brook, the IBF welterweight champion, but Top Rank wasn’t able to put the fight together with Brook’s promoter Eddie Hearn. Rios is kind of living off of his 3rd round win over Mike Alvarado earlier this year in January. He thinks he’s improved as a fighter from how he performed in his past fights against the likes of Diego Chaves and Manny Pacquiao. I don’t think he has. I just think Alvarado was over-the-hill and perfect for Rios to beat.



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