Bradley thinks he’s top 3 pound-for-pound now

By Boxing News - 10/13/2013 - Comments

bradley5333By Chris Williams: WBO welterweight champion Tim Bradley’s 12 round split decision win over Juan Manuel Marquez (55-7-1, 40 KO’s) last night in Las Vegas, Nevada has Bradley now thinking he deserves to be in the Ring Magazine’s top 3 pound-for-pound list in replacing Marquez for the #3 spot.

Bradley’s performance last night didn’t look like what you would normally see from a top 3 pound-for-pound fighter due to his lack of power, his focus on mainly defense, and his unwillingness to stay in the pocket against Marquez.

For a pay-per-view fight, it was a very boring fight, and the undercard bouts between Orlando Cruz and Orlando Salido and Vasyl Lomachenko and Jose Ramirez didn’t make up for the lack of excitement. I couldn’t help thinking that this entire card would have been on ESPN2 rather than HBO PPV, because all of the fights were either one-sided mismatches or just plain boring to watch.

Bradley said after the fight “I want to fight nothing but the best. I have to be considered top three in the world now. There is Floyd Mayweather, there is Andre Ward and there is Tim Bradley.”

If Marquez was number three with Ring Magazine, then Bradley should take his place. But I never agreed with Marquez at number three. There are better fighters than him in boxing, and Bradley would be a poor fighter to be even in the top 10 in my pound-for-pound list. I don’t rate him as even a top 20 fighter. He’s boring to watch and the only interesting fight that I’ve ever seen him in was against Ruslan Provodnikov, and he almost lost that fight.

Here’s who I feel deserves to the top 10 pound-for-pound fighters:

1. Floyd Mayweather Jr.

2. Andre Ward

3. Guillermo Rigondeaux

4. Roman Gonzalez

5. Yuriokis Gamboa

6. Danny Garcia

7. Gennady Golovkin

8. Sergey Kovalev

9. Adonis Stevenson

10. Saul “Canelo” Alvarez

Bradley doesn’t belong on that compilation, and I think the Ring Magazine’s pound-for-pound list is largely a Mickey Mouse list once you get past the first two fighters in Mayweather and Ward. Like I said, I think Bradley doesn’t belong anywhere near the top 10 due to his boring fighting style.



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