By Chris Williams: World Boxing Council light welterweight champion Devon Alexander (21-0, 13 KO’s) signed the contract for a unification bout against WBO light welterweight champion Timothy Bradley (26-0, 11 KO’s) on January 2011. There may not be an official light welterweight tournament, because Victor Ortiz isn’t facing any of the top four light welterweights, but it pretty much comes out to the same thing as if there is one. WBA light welterweight champion Amir Khan is facing Marcos Maidana on December 11th, and the winner of that fight is going to be facing the winner of Alexander vs. Bradley.

You got to figure that Ortiz will probably be taking on the eventual winner of the tournament-like fights, if Ortiz doesn’t get beaten along the way by somebody. The Alexander-Bradley fight is so late. These guys should have fought ages ago. They both may have wanted or expected more money for their clash, but it’s still too early in their careers for them to be getting Manny Pacquiao and Floyd Mayweather Jr. type money.

Mayweather didn’t make huge money until he had been fighting for 11 years as a pro and even then it took a fight against Oscar De La Hoya for that to happen. Neither Bradley or Alexander have a Gold Medla in the amateurs. There’s really nothing about them that would make you think that they should be big stars already. They both need to fight, and then beat up the Maidana-Khan winner and then get rid of Ortiz. Whoever wins all those fights, is going to be well on their way to becoming a star. I doubt that either Bradley or Alexander will beat the Khan-Maidana winner. They don’t punch hard enough and will have problems with the winner of the Khan vs. Maidana bout.

I know Bradley can fight a little bit, but he looked so average in his bout against Luis Carlos Abregu in July. I wasn’t impressed with him at all. And Alexander looked far worse in his win over Andriy Kotelnik in August. I think Alexander should have lost that fight and I think he was badly exposed by the Ukrainian. I see the winner of the Alexander-Bradley fight ending up getting beaten by Khan or Maidana. It’s good that they’ve finally decided to fight, because they’re wasting their time with other guys. The way for them to become the huge stars that they want to become is for them to fight each other and then beat Khan and/or Maidana.