By Jim Dower: Unbeaten WBO light welterweight champion Timothy Bradley (26-0, 11 KO’s has an important tournament-like fight coming up next month against World Boxing Council (WBC) title holder Devon Alexander (21-0, 13 KO’s) at the Silverdome, in Pontiac, Michigan. The fight is especially important for Bradley because if he can get by Alexander, presumably Bradley will be getting a fight against the division’s new cash cow WBA light welterweight champion Amir Khan.

This is a fight that Khan says he wants but you can never be too sure whether Khan will get to this fight because he has what could be a dangerous tune-up that he has to face first against possible opponent Lamont Peterson in April.

Bradley doesn’t have a problem facing Alexander, but he wanted the fight to be bigger so that he and Alexander could make more money. This is why Bradley held off on taking the fight when it was first offered to him. He wanted more time for it to gain momentum. Unfortunately, the boxing public has pushed hard for the fight. It also wasn’t helped that Alexander was almost beaten in his last fight against former WBA light welterweight champion Andriy Kotelnik in August. Alexander won the fight by a 12 round decision but looked like the loser. I had Kotelnik winning the fight by a couple of rounds.

In an interview at the Main Event boxing radio show at allfm.org, Bradley had this to say about Alexander: “I was kind of forced into this fight. I didn’t really want this fight. My promoters were like, ‘You want to fight Devon”‘ And I was l like ‘It’s still too soon. It’s still too soon. Let’s fight other fighters and let the fight build, then we can make even more money.’ You got to think business-like. I have to fight the Alexander fight because it’s the fight the fans want to and I have to prove I am the best 140 pound fighter in the world. Now I have to fight him.”

The sad reality about the light welterweight division is that unless you fight the very top guys like Khan, Marcos Maidana, Alexander, Zab Judah, Victor Ortiz and Lucas Matthysse, you’re just not going to raise your name that much. Bradley and Alexander haven’t helped themselves by not fighting these guys. Instead of fighting Luis Carlos Abregu and Peterson recently, Bradley should have gone after someone like Judah or Ortiz. The Abregu and Peterson fights didn’t do much for Bradley. And the Kotelnik fight really hurt Alexander. He got exposed in that fight and it didn’t help him win any new fans.