By Dan Ambrose: While some boxing fans may disagree, I feel that the winner of the January 29th fight between WBC light welterweight champion Devon Alexander (21-0, 13 KO’s) and WBO light welterweight champion Timothy Bradley (26-0, 11 KO’s) will effectively be deciding who the best fighter is in the light welterweight division. Bradley and Alexander are fighting on a higher level than the other fighters in the division, and there’s hardly any reason to consider guys like Victor Ortiz, Zab Judah, Amir Khan, Marcos Maidana, Kaizer Mabuza or Lucas Matthysse as being good enough to beat either Bradley or Alexander.

Those guys are fighting too good right now and it’s almost pointless for the winner of this fight to have to prove himself by fighting this or that fighter. The fighter that the Bradley-Alexander winner supposedly has to fight to prove themselves is WBA light welterweight champion Amir Khan. However, I think that’s silly, because all you have to do is take one look at Khan’s awful performance against Maidana, a fight in which Khan was badly hurt in the 10th and stunk up the joint before and after that, to see that Khan wouldn’t stand a chance against the Bradley-Alexander winner. If was smart, he’d vacate his WBA title and try to move up to welterweight immediately to try and persuade Floyd Mayweather Jr. into fighting him before he gets exposed again.

Bradley is looking almost unbeatable at this point in his career. He’s already handled Junior Witter, Lamont Peterson, Luis Carlos Abregu and Kendall Holt to show you how good he is. Bradley is hard to hit and excellent hand speed. He’s probably going to beat Alexander unless Alexander raises his game a notch or two. Alexander has looked great in beating Witter and Juan Urango before struggling a bit against Andriy Kotelnik in his last fight.