By Dan Ambrose: Rather than Gennady Golovkin getting the winner of next year’s mega fight between Saul “Canel” Alvarez and Miguel Cotto, Top Rank promoter Bob Arum says that his fighter Tim Bradley (31-1, 12 KOs) could very well be the one that faces the winner of Cotto-Canelo instead of the hard hitting Golovkin. Arum says that Bradley wants that fight, and he feels it’s an easy one to make.
The big question is how would the tiny 5’6” Bradley be able to compete against sluggers as big and as powerful as Cotto or Canelo? There’s also the question of whether Bradley would even deserve the fight. Unless the Canelo-Cotto winner is going to vacate the WBC middleweight title, they’d be defending it against a welterweight instead of a middleweight.
Yesterday, Bradley said this about Golovkin: “Triple-G is very slow. I didn’t know he was that slow…I got Canelo in that fight if they fight,” in an interview with esnewsreporting.com.
In hindsight, Bradley’s comments about Golovkin could be seen by some as a way of downplaying Golovkin’s skills so that he can get the winner of the Canelo-Cotto fight instead of Golovkin. It’s too bad Bradley doesn’t fight Golovkin for the privilege to face the Canelo vs. Cotto winner. That would be the best way to do it, but I doubt Arum would ever let Bradley fight Golovkin.
Bradley would be moving up two entire divisions to get a title shot against the winner of that fight, and that obviously would bring into the question whether Bradley should be allowed to fight for the WBC title by the World Boxing Council. This would be Danny Garcia vs. Rod Salka all over again, but far, far worse because Bradley would be moving up in weight two divisions instead of just one like Salka did.
“The winner of Canelo-Cotto is a possibility [for Bradley],” Arum said to Steve Kim. “That fight could be relatively easily made. That’s what people would pay to see.”
When asked if Bradley has the size to compete against Canelo or Cotto, Arum said “I assume he can, but we’ll have to see.”
For Bradley to get a crack at the Canelo vs. Cotto winner, he’ll need to win his next fight on December 13th against #10 WBA Diego Chaves (23-2, 19 KOs) at the Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas, in Las Vegas, Nevada, USA. That’s a winnable fight for Bradley, but it’ll be a tough one because Chaves has much better power than Bradley.
If Bradley chooses to move all night like he did against Juan Manuel Marquez then it can be an easy fight for him, but he won’t win any fans by fighting like that. But if Bradley chooses to make it an entertaining fight by slugging with Chavez, we could see Bradley hurt multiple times like he was against Ruslan Provodnikov. Bradley is very small and he doesn’t have the size or the chin to stand in with welterweights with power and size.
It would be a shame to see Golovkin skipped over for the Canelo-Cotto winner so that Bradley can get the fight instead of him, but that’s boxing. If it wasn’t Bradley fighting the Canelo-Cotto winner, then it would be someone else not named Golokvin. But you’d at least like to see the Canelo vs. Cotto winner to face an actual middleweight if they’re going to be defending the WBC middleweight title. If they want to vacate the belt then it doesn’t matter that they’re fighting Bradley.
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