By Dan Ambrose: Former two division world champion Tim Bradley (31-1-1, 12 KOs) says he would like to step up to 160 to face IBO/WBA middleweight champion Gennady Golovkin (33-0, 30 KOs) if he’s interested. Bradley, 31, says he’s not afraid to fight Golovkin, because he believes in his skills.
Bradley says he’ll fight at the full weight for the middleweight division without a catch-weight involved because he’s not afraid. Bradley says he’s been calling out Miguel Cotto and Saul “Canelo” Alvarez for a fight against one or both of them, but neither fighter has accepted his challenge.
With neither of them showing interest, Bradley is turning his attention to the hard hitting Golovkin for a bout.
“I’ll fight Triple G. He puts on his pants just like I put on my pants,” Bradley said to Fighthype. “I’m not a coward, and I got skills. I believe in my skills. I’ll fight him. Nobody else wants to fight him. I’ll fight him at 160. I will. Everybody starts stuttering when they mention Triple G. I want that 5th world championship,” Bradley said.
Bradley has a fight this Saturday on June 20th against light welterweight Jessie Vargas (26-0, 9 KOs) at the StubHub Center in Carson, California. While Bradley is favored in the fight, it’s still not a given that he’s going to beat Vargas.
There are a lot of boxing fans who are giving Vargas a real chance of winning this fight. If Bradley can’t even beat a non-punching light welterweight like Vargas then how is he expected to compete with Golovkin, a fighter who would likely obliterate Vargas in one or two rounds?
The problem with Bradley choosing to fight a middleweight like Golovkin is that Bradley has never fought even at 154, and now he’s talking about moving up two divisions from welterweight all the way to middleweight. HBO would likely be skeptical of a fight of this nature because it likely won’t be competitive.
Bradley hasn’t won a fight in two years since 2013, and he just finished taking a battering against 5’7” Diego Chaves last December in fighting to a 12 round draw.
Bradley’s face was badly swelled up in that fight, and Chaves doesn’t have anywhere near the same punching power that Golovkin has going for him. Bradley was also battered in his fight against Ruslan Provodnikov in 2013. Bradley got the win, but he came out of the fight with a concussion afterwards.
If Bradley could show boxing fans that he’s capable of fighting at the middleweight level by moving up to that weight class and beating the likes of Tureano Johnson or Marco Antonio Rubio, I think it would be easier for fans and for HBO to believe that a fight between him and Golovkin would be worth taking place. But without that happening, it just looks like Bradley wants a payday fight against Golovkin, and he realizes that it’s a fight that would give him a decent payday due to the novelty of it.
We’re not seeing any other welterweights like Keith Thurman, Kell Brook, Floyd Mayweather Jr., or Amir Khan saying that they’ll move up to middleweight to fight Golovkin. To hear Bradley say it makes himself sound valiant, but at 5’6” and without any punching power, Bradley would be so out of his element that it wouldn’t be interesting.
Bradley is a former light welterweight who has never knocked anyone at welterweight since he moved up to that weight class in 2012. He’s have five fights at 147, and hasn’t come close to knocking anybody out. All the fighters that Bradley has fought at welterweight have been small welterweights like Chaves, Manny Pacquiao, Ruslan Provodnikov and Juan Manuel Marquez.