By Allan Fox: WBO welterweight champion Tim Bradley (30-0, 12 KO’s) had a sparring session with Lucas Matthysse (34-2, 32 KO’s) last Monday in Indio, California for Bradley to get ready for his October 12th fight against Juan Manuel Marquez (55-6-1, 40 KO’s) at the Thomas & Mack Center, in Las Vegas, Nevada, USA.
Bradley survived the sparring session in one piece, but he was hit with some big shots during the session. Of course, Bradley has the benefit of being able to wear head gear, and Matthysse is wearing sparring gloves.
The worry for Bradley is that he was badly hurt in his last fight against Ruslan Provodnikov. Bradley won the fight by a 12 round unanimous decision, but he was knocked down in the 12th. After the fight, Bradley gave an interview and he sounded punch drunk from the big shots that Provodnikov handed landed on him.
Bradley said to Mydesert.com “They were like ‘Whoa, why would you bring in a big puncher at this time?’ But I understand boxing is a big mind game, and I think I overcame any fear I had that I wouldn’t be ready for the fight Marquez fight. I took some hard shots today and it was nothing. I didn’t get rocked, I didn’t get dazed.”
It wasn’t an actual fight, and Bradley didn’t have to worry about getting hit with lighter gloves without head gear to protect him. It’s too bad a fight between Bradley and Matthysse likely will never happen due to Bradley being promoted by Top Rank, and Matthysse with Golden Boy Promotions. Those two promotional companies rarely match their big stars against each other. Hopefully that’ll change one of these days.
Matthysse is training for his September 14th fight against WBA/WBC light welterweight champion Danny Garcia (26-0, 14 KO’s) on the Floyd Mayweather Jr. vs. Saul “Canelo” Alvarez fight card at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, Nevada. Bradley doesn’t fight anything like Garcia, so it’s unclear how much Matthysse is benefiting from sparring sessions with Bradley other than having a world champion to spar with.
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