By Chris Williams: If trainer Teddy Atlas gets his way, Floyd Mayweather Jr. (49-0, 26 KOs) will be making a comeback in 2016 to specifically face his fighter WBO welterweight champion Tim Bradley (33-1-1, 13 KOs) to see if who the better fighter is between the two of them. Atlas says he wants to test the wits of Mayweather by coming up with a game plan for Bradley to give Mayweather his first defeat of his career.
Atlas is betting that Mayweather, 38, won’t be satisfied with ending his career at 49 wins, because he thinks he’ll want to come back to get win No.50 against Bradley.
Why Mayweather would want to come back to a fight against the Top Rank promoted Bradley is the big question, because it’s not something that you’d think would be high on his list of things to do.
“That’s a decision of his promoter Top Rank and his manager,” Atlas said when asked by Fighthype if he’d like for Bradley to fight Saul “Canelo” Alvarez or Manny Pacquiao next. “Maybe someone like Mayweather [would like to fight Bradley next]; maybe someone like Mayweather wants to come back for number 50, and wants to match intelligence with us and wants to match wits with us. That would be interesting. To give up a chance to come up with a game plan to give him a loss. That’s in the hands of Monica [Bradley’s manager/wife] and that’s in the hands of [Bradley’s promoter] Bob Arum. 50 sounds better than 49. I have a feeling he might like 50 if he wants to come back for that. He has a lot of pride and considers himself the smartest man in boxing and he deserves that position and he’s earned it. Maybe he wants to come back and match wits and see what we can come up with on the chalk board to see who can draw up a better fight plan,” Atlas said.
Bradley looked good in beating Rios, but I think we all know that Mayweather is a much different type of a fighter. His hand speed and talent advantage over Bradley would defeat any game plan that Teddy Atlas could come up with.
We already saw Atlas’ brilliant game plan last night with him lecturing Bradley in between rounds, telling him to jab and move. None the less, Bradley wasn’t fast on his feet, he wasn’t that fast in terms of hand speed, and he wasn’t all that flexible in terms of his upper body. He also wasn’t that power when it came to throwing head shots. He looked like a little body builder trying to fight. I don’t care what game plan Atlas would come up for Bradley, he would never beat a talented fighter like Mayweather in a thousand years.
I can understand why Atlas might want Mayweather to take the fight with Bradley. The money that Atlas would get as the trainer for Bradley for a fight against Mayweather would likely be huge. That would be a very nice payday for Atlas if Mayweather were to agree to a fight against Bradley. That would likely be a career payday for Atlas if the Mayweather-Bradley fight took place. It would be a mismatch in terms of the fight, but the money Atlas would get would be huge.
I don’t think that Bradley’s win over a fat and out of shape Brandon Rios (33-3-1, 24 KOs) last Saturday night was a big enough win to cause Mayweather to want to make a comeback specifically fight the 32-year-old Bradley. It’s not as if Bradley beat someone really good with a chance of beating him like Kell Brook, Amir Khan, Shawn Porter, Saul “Canelo” Alvarez or Gennady Golovkin.
If Bradley did something out of the ordinary by pulling off an upset against a very, very good fighter, then I think Mayweather might somehow be tempted to deal with Top Rank in order to fight the likes of Bradley. But what we saw last Saturday night was Bradley fighting a fat 170lb fighter in Rios, who had previously been schooled by Pacquiao in 2013, and who had also been beaten by Mike Alvarado and arguably beaten by Diego Chaves and Richard Abril as well. Bradley didn’t accomplish anything at all.
I think the jury is still out on whether Atlas has improved Bradley or not. I can’t tell for sure if Bradley is a better fighter or not. The only way that you can really tell is if his promoter Bob Arum of Top Rank chooses to match him tough against someone like Terence Crawford, Pacquiao, Errol Spence, Shawn Porter, Kell Brook, Canelo Alvarez, Danny Garcia, Khan or Golovkin.
Arum would obviously love to match Bradley against Pacquiao or Canelo, but it remains to be seen whether either of those fights are going to happen next or at all at this point. Pacquiao supposedly will be making the decision about who he fights on April 9th, and I doubt that he’ll choose Bradley. If it’s Arum’s decision about who Pacquiao fights, then I see him matching him against Crawford rather than Bradley. Arum would then match Bradley against Canelo in early 2016 if Canelo’s promoter Oscar De La Hoya is on board with making that fight.
The reality is that Bradley isn’t a big enough name for Mayweather to want to come back and deal with the likely headache of having to negotiate with Top Rank for a fight between the two fighters. I don’t know that a fight between Mayweather and Bradley could even be successfully negotiated either, because I have a feeling that Bradley might end up pricing himself out for the fight by asking for too much money.
I can’t see Mayweather agreeing to a 55-45 purse split for a fight against Bradley or even a 60-40 or 75-25. At best, I think Mayweather might agree to a 90-10 purse split or a 95-5 purse split, but that’s about the best I could see for a fight between him and Bradley. Would Bradley and Arum agree to that? I doubt it. That’s why I don’t see a fight between them ever getting made.
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