By William Mackay: The summer unification bout between WBA Super World light welterweight champion Amir Khan (24-1, 17 KO’s) and WBC/WBO light welterweight title holder Timothy Bradley (27-0, 11 KO’s) will be taking place on July 23rd instead of July 30th, according to Dan Rafael of ESPN. It hardly matters the week change in time. Khan, 24, has to win his next fight against his hand-picked opponent Paul McCloskey (22-0, 12 KO’s), whom he faces on April 16th in the UK.
If Khan doesn’t win that fight, he can forget about the Bradley-Khan fight in the summer. However, Khan and his promoters obviously know what they’re doing by picking out the weak-punching and slow-handed McCloskey because this is a guy that is very similar to Dmitriy Salita, the fighter that the WBA ranked at number #1 shortly before Khan destroyed him in a 1st round TKO in December 2009. This should be an easy fight and people will wonder why the WBA had McCloskey ranked at number #5 afterwards given his complete lack of experience against upper tier fighters.
Bradley, 27, is coming off a 10th round technical decision win over WBC light welterweight champion Devon Alexander in January. This was a fight in which Bradley tagged Alexander with accidental headbutts on several occasions and had Alexander cut up badly because of them. Although Bradley won the fight, his stock really plummeted in that fight due to the lack of punching power that he showed in the fight. The Bradley-Alexander fight paled in comparison to the skills that were shown by Khan and Marcos Maidana in December 2010.
Bradley doesn’t have a fight scheduled and it’s unclear whether he’ll sit and wait until July for the Khan unification bout. The way that Bradley fought against Alexander, he may want to forget about taking any fights in between because if he fights anyone decent, he might very well lose. I consider Lucas Matthysse, Khan, Maidana and Kaizer Mabuza as better fighters than Bradley. I also think Zab Judah would give Bradley a lot of problems with his speed and power.
Comments are closed.