By Dan Ambrose: Former WBO welterweight champion Tim Bradley (31-1, 12 KOs) will be facing the big punching welterweight Diego Chaves (23-2, 19 KOs) this Saturday night in a 12 round bout on HBO from the Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas, in Las Vegas, Nevada, USA.
Should Bradley win this fight, he’s said that he would be interested in moving up to junior middleweight to test himself against Miguel Cotto or Saul “Canelo” Alvarez if either of those guys would be open to facing him.
I’m not sure that either of them would have even the slightest interest in burning up one of their valuable fights in their career given Bradley’s track record in terms of the pay-per-view buys when matched against the likes of Manny Pacquiao.
“Maybe even 154,” Bradley said in a recent conference call transcript.
Top Rank vice president of Operation Carl Moretti mentioned IBF welterweight champion Kell Brook as someone he would be interested in matching Bradley against if Brook doesn’t wind up facing Amir Khan in the near future.
“I had some conversations with Eddie Hearn and Kell Brook if he can’t get the Amir Khan fight put together,” Moretti said. “Maybe he [Bradley] will have to fight another [British fighter] to win the title at 147.”
A fight against Brook makes a lot more sense for Bradley then sticking him in with the likes of Canelo and/or Cotto and watching him get chopped apart in lightning fashion. Those guys are much heavier than Bradley. They’re not much taller than him, but they’re carrying around a lot more weight.
Bradley says he walks around in the low 150s when in training. With Canelo and Cotto, we’re talking two fighters that are both near or over 170 pounds. With a 20 pound weight advantage over Bradley, they’re going to tear him apart in a one-sided fight. It would be like Ruslan Provodnikov, but much worse for Bradley. We saw what Provodnikov did to Bradley in their fight last year.
Kell Brook would be a very tough fight for Bradley because of his punching power and strong jab. I’m not sure that Bradley would do any better against Brook than he would against a strong junior middleweight.
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