By Dan Ambrose: WBO light welterweight champion Timothy Bradley (26-0, 11 KO’s) has an important fight coming up against World Boxing Council (WBC) light welterweight champion Devon Alexander (21-0, 13 KO’s) on January 29th at the Silverdome, Pontiac, Michigan. This was supposed to have been a unification bout but Bradley wasn’t interested in paying the sanctioning fees for the WBC title, so if he beats Alexander, the WBC title will go vacant but it won’t go to Bradley. It seems that Bradley doesn’t care about winning one more title because it would likely slow him down by forcing him to fight uninteresting contenders from time to time.

Bradley and Alexander have bigger things on the horizon. The winner of this fight will take on the winner of the Marcos Maidana vs. Amir Khan fight sometime next year for a unification bout, which will get a lot of attention and make a big star out of the winner of that fight. All of this could in theory end with the winner of those fights possibly facing someone like Manny Pacquiao or Floyd Mayweather Jr. It would be hard to see those fighters ignoring the eventual light welterweight winner, because of how popular they will be. But at the same time, the eventual winner of all these fights won’t necessarily need to fight Mayweather or Pacquiao to make good money. They’ll do fine against other opponents like Saul Alvarez, Andre Berto and Shane Mosley.

Alexander looked bad in his last fight against Andriy Kotelnik last August. Alexander, while fighting at home in Saint Louis, won the fight by a 12 round unanimous decision but the bout ended up being very close and Alexander got hit a lot in the fight. This wasn’t the kind off performance that boxing fans were expecting from Alexander when he signed on for the Kotelnik fight. Alexander was expected to win the fight with ease, but instead he went life and death with him. Kotelnik exposed Alexander as being vulnerable to getting hit with jabs and counter shots. This obviously won’t escape the attention of Bradley, who has an excellent jab is good at firing back at his opponents when hit.