By Dan Ambrose: Bob Arum seems really interested in the idea of putting Manny Pacquiao in with WBC/WBO light welterweight champion Timothy Bradley (27-0, 11 KO’s). Arum must see Bradley’s perfect record and think that casual boxing fans will perk up at the thought of seeing Pacquiao take on an unbeaten fighter like Bradley and perhaps think that this guy is for real and maybe someone that would be competitive with the Filipino star.

Hardcore boxing fans know better, especially after watching Bradley stink up the joint for 10 rounds against Devon Alexander last Saturday night. That was a poor performance from Bradley, but not something new to him. He’s always looked like this. But Arum seems to be really excited about putting Pacquiao in with Bradley and maybe even signing Bradley up with his Top Rank promotional company, if Bradley doesn’t resign with Gary Shaw.

The one problem that may mess up Arum’s dream is that Bradley is likely to face WBA light welterweight champion Amir Khan and could be fight someone dangerous like Marcos Maidana next. If that happens, he’ll almost surely lose both fights and along with it the hope of a big money fight against Pacquiao. I wonder if Shaw might decide to keep Bradley away from dangerous fighters for awhile until he gets a fight against Pacquiao and can cash out. There’s going to be a tremendous amount of pressure on Shaw and Bradley to fight Khan and/or Maidana in the next few months and I don’t know how Bradley and Shaw will be able to resist the public pressure and the pressure coming from HBO to fight one of those two. It might help Bradley to steer clear of those fighters in the long term sense, because this is probably what Arum would do if he were the promoter of Bradley. However, Bradley will take tremendous heat from boxing fans and HBO if he doesn’t face one or both Maidana and Khan, especially after how horrible Bradley looked against Alexander. I’m sure Bradley will stay unbeaten if he avoids Maidana and Khan, but the public will tune him out if he doesn’t face them.