By Dan Ambrose: Last night, #4 WBO Jessie Vargas (27-1, 10 KOs) became a two-division world champion by beating the smaller, and weaker Sadam Ali (22-1, 13 KOs) by a 9th round knockout to claim the vacant WBO welterweight title at the DC Armory in Washington, DC.
After the fight, Vargas said he wants a rematch with Tim Bradley, who soundly beat him by a 12 round unanimous decision last June. The ending of their fight was controversial somewhat due to Vargas hurting Bradley in the 12th, and the referee blowing it by stopping the fight 10 seconds early thinking the fight had ended. Bradley would have clearly made it to the end regardless if the fight had gone on.
“It burns me how my last fight against Bradley went down. It was wrong. But Top Rank got me a title fight and I trained hard with a new team. I only want one fight which I deserve to get, a rematch with Bradley. I don’t care if he beats Pacquiao or not, I want Bradley,” said Vargas.
Vargas and Bradley are both promoted by Bob Arum of Top Rank. I think it’s a given that Arum is going to put them back in with each other later this year, perhaps in the late summer. I don’t know that it’s a fight that would be good for the boxing fans though. It would be just another mismatch with Bradley easily beating the limited Vargas.
Arum can obviously do what he wants. If HBO doesn’t want to televise the Bradley-Vargas rematch, then I’m sure Arum will shop it around to Showtime. If they don’t want to show it, then Arum will find some network that will. I just hope he doesn’t get any big ideas to put Bradley-Vargas 2 on pay-per-view, because that would be a huge mistake. I barely would want to watch it on free television. I couldn’t imagine paying to see Bradley beat Vargas again.
Vargas had an easy time beating the 27-year-old Ali last night. He dropped Ali in the 8th and 9th rounds with right hands. Referee Kenny Chevalier stopped the fight at2:09 of the 9th. Ali didn’t have the punching power or the chin to compete against Vargas. There are guys in the 147lb division that would likely trounce Vargas besides Bradley.
I see Errol Spence Jr. having an incredibly easy time beating Vargas, as well as Keith Thurman, Shawn Porter, Amir Khan and Lamont Peterson. However, I don’t see any of those fights ever happening due to Vargas being promoted by Top Rank. About the best that I can see happening with Vargas is him being matched against Bradley three or four times by Arum, and then maybe being put in with Terence Crawford three or four times, Antonio Margarito, Jose Benavidez and Ruslan Provodnikov.
Chris Algieri is also someone I could see Arum putting in with Vargas. Those are pretty much the main guys that I see Vargas spending the rest of his career fighting in terms of well-known fighters. Yes, he’ll fight a lot of obscure guys in welterweight division, but the main ones he fights will probably be from that list.
Arum likes to do a lot of rematches with his Top Rank stable fighters, so I can see Vargas fighting some of those fighters as many as four or five times depending on how one-sided those fights are. The Bradley-Vargas fight was terribly one-sided in Bradley’s favor, yet we’re probably going to see a rematch between them this year simply because of the referee blowing it by stopping the fight too soon.
I don’t think that’s a good enough reason myself to have a rematch, but there will be some fans that will mistakenly believe that Vargas had a chance to beat Bradley the second time around. Vargas doesn’t have a chance in my view.
After Bradley beats Vargas with ease the second time, fans will likely wonder why they ever thought Vargas could beat Bradley. If they would just listen to me, they could save time and disappointment by watching something else that night rather than a repeat of Bradley’s one-sided win over Vargas. Bradley beat Vargas by the scores of 115-112, 116-112 and 117-111. The only accurate score of the bunch was the 117-111 score in my opinion, and even that one was too kind to Vargas. He really got dominated by Bradley other than that lucky punch he landed in the 12th.
“I tore him apart piece by piece,” said Vargas about his win over Ali. “It was the best I’ve felt in the ring in a long time. My new chief trainer Dewey Cooper showed me a new technique to develop more power. It was a move to turn my hips more and drive in the power. I felt strong walking to the ring.”
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