By Dan Ambrose: Timothy Bradley (25-0, 11 KO’s) has a tremendous amount of pressure on him in his fight with welterweight contender Luis Carlos Abregu (29-0, 23 KO’s) on July17th, because not only does the 26-year-old Bradley have to win the fight, but he also has to look really impressive in doing so.

Bradley can’t just win by a narrow or dull 12 round decision if he wants to become a mega star in a hurry. That’s been part of the problem for Bradley. He wins each time out, but he doesn’t look especially flashy or overly impressive to the point where you’re just looking forward to each of his fights.

This is why a relative newcomer Argentinian knockout artist and now WBA light welterweight interim champion Marcos Maidana (28-1, 27 KO’s) was quickly able to build a large following in the United States, long after Bradley had already had many of his fights shown on cable. The reason for this is because Maidana was willing to slug it out, and didn’t care too much whether he got hit or not.

His whole focus is to try and take his opponent’s head off. Bradley, in contrast, is a fighter that likes to jump in and jump out, land shots and quickly scurry away before he gets hit. Because of that, he’s less interesting to watch in my view. He has fast hands, but he doesn’t stay in the pocket and use them.

And because he’s so short, he can’t really run over opponents in the light welterweight division like Amir Khan and Maidana are doing right now. Instead, Bradley often has to grind out a 12 round decision and it’s not really exciting stuff.

If you watch some of his fights, it often gets rather dull at some point because he’s basically doing the same thing every time and doesn’t have the power to just end matters. With Bradley, there’s no unpredictability to his fights.

There’s no sudden knockouts like a Maidana fight. It’s just Bradley grinding out a decision with his fast hands. He doesn’t move as well as Floyd Mayweather Jr., so you can’t put him in the Mayweather class. Bradley is a fighter that’s going to look to box his opponents 99% of the time and if a knockout comes, so be it.

But he won’t be looking to take anyone out, and it’s wise that he doesn’t because Bradley doesn’t have the big power to make it happen. This is why it’s curious that Bradley has chosen to take on a big welterweight like Abregu. You know Bradley doesn’t have the power to trade shots with a big puncher like Abregu. So, what we’re probably be stuck with watching is Bradley hit and run all night long in a boring 12 round decision.

Bradley will win the fight but lose out on impressing the fans. He’ll win, but not win over new fans and his fight will likely be instantly forgotten, because there won’ be anything extraordinary going on in the fight other than Bradley grinding out yet another decision.

If I’m Bradley’s manager, I’m telling him that he’s going to have to break out of the old mold and start taking some chances so he can start impressing and creating new fans. The problem here is that Bradley, only 5’6″, will likely have even less power at welterweight than he did at light welterweight.

If anything, Bradley likely be weaker and even more boring to watch. The smarter move for Bradley would have been for him to move down to lightweight and try to take on a fighter like Michael Katsidis or Humberto Soto and then go to war with them for 12 rounds. At least Bradley would have a chance of showing more power and would have a decent chance of scoring a knockout.