Ranking the Best Opponents for Timothy Bradley's Next Fight
Two weeks after a Hall of Fame induction, HBO's Jim Lampley predictably summed it up best.
"Could anybody have harder luck with his wins than Tim Bradley?" the veteran mic man said, running off the recent litany in which the popular Californian had to face cynicism after defeats of Manny Pacquiao, Ruslan Provodnikov and Juan Manuel Marquez and then had an apparent triumph denied thanks to a dubious draw with Diego Chaves last December.
After Saturday night, the roll call now extends to include Jessie Vargas.
The 31-year-old Bradley emerged with a hard-fought and well-deserved unanimous decision over his previously unbeaten foe, but he was forced to answer far more post-fight questions about the fight's hectic last 30 seconds than its decisive first 35-and-a-half minutes.
Bradley was nearly dropped with an overhand right from Vargas in the final stages of the 12th round and was subsequently wavering along the ropes when referee Pat Russell mistakenly thought he'd heard the final bell and waved the fight off. Vargas immediately reacted as if he'd been given a dramatic TKO victory; then, once order was restored and the scorecards were read, he felt a rematch was owed.
Bradley, who won by scores of 117-111, 116-112 and 115-112, suggested he'd have survived the onslaught had Russell not intervened—an assertion agreed to by Lampley and colleagues Max Kellerman and Andre Ward. But, thanks to the dubious nature of it all, the winner agreed that a second go-round was doable.
Bleacher Report, incidentally, had it 116-111 for Bradley.
"Talk to the people," he said to Vargas in the ring. "Let's do it."
Rematch or no, given Bradley's fan-friendly style and his willingness to fight anyone, his dance card will remain crammed for as long as he stays on the elite level. With that in mind, we've suggested a handful of top possibilities here, with the permanent invitation to make your thoughts known in the comments section.
6. Jessie Vargas
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For 35 minutes, 30 seconds, precisely no one was pining for a Jessie Vargas do-over.
The youngster had hung in gamely and perhaps won a few rounds, but it seemed clear that the level on which Bradley resided was a tangible leap—if not a quantum one—from what he was accustomed to.
Then Pat Russell intervened and gave Team Vargas all the leverage it needed to reframe a one-sided loss into a rematch-worthy injustice.
“It was an honest mistake on his part,” Vargas told HBO’s Max Kellerman after the chaotic ending, “but those 10 seconds cost me the fight.”
Of course, Bradley, having won a decision by three, four and six points on the official scorecards, could have labeled Vargas’ comments sour grapes and told him to go pound rocks. Instead, he graciously accepted the younger man’s invite during his own post-fight audience with Kellerman.
“Why not? We can do a rematch,” he said. “I don’t have a problem with that. Absolutely, I’ll give him a rematch. No problem.”
5. Keith Thurman
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At the intersection of fighting the best and going after a belt at 147 pounds, Bradley may just find a guy named Keith Thurman.
The unbeaten Florida-based slugger has developed a reputation as the most avoided commodity in the division, and though the hardware he holds—the WBA's so-called regular title—is dubious at best, a Bradley victory over him would carry legitimate significance.
The two men have sparred intermittently via media in the last year or two, with Thurman telling the Ring as early as April 2013 that "as soon as I get my hands on (Bradley), it’s over."
The sarcastic sparks flew heading into Bradley's match with Diego Chaves, whom Thurman stopped in 10 rounds in July 2013. Dontae's Boxing Nation (warning: link is NSFW) interviewed Thurman as a follow-up to a prior chat with Bradley, in which Desert Storm had suggested he was a superior fighter.
"I'm actually not too sure about my hand speed or my power," Thurman said. "I don't know if my power's real or if people like to lay down for me. Bradley, I think I'm the most overrated fighter you know. If you want to outbox somebody real nice and easy, you should pick me."
4. Kell Brook
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Before last December’s disappointment against Diego Chaves, in which Bradley seemed on the short end of a widely disputed draw, there was live chatter that a match with Kell Brook was imminent.
The British fighter had become a 147-pound commodity with a surprise defeat of then-IBF champion Shawn Porter in August 2014, and the promoters for both men had engaged in discussions pending the outcome of Brook’s pursuit of countryman Amir Khan.
“I had some conversations with Eddie Hearn and Kell Brook if he can’t get the Amir Khan fight put together,” Carl Moretti, president of Bradley’s promoter, Top Rank, told BoxingScene.com. “Tim ironically won his first title at 140 against a Brit, so maybe he will have to fight another to win the title at 147.”
Needless to say, the Khan fight still hasn’t occurred. And given that Bradley has declared himself specifically in the big-fight business these days, a match between the two makes even more sense now with a championship on the line than it might have a year ago.
If Floyd Mayweather Jr. indeed cedes the throne via retirement later this year, these two guys will occupy high rungs on the ladder when it comes to guys claiming succession.
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3. Manny Pacquiao
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For Manny Pacquiao, things have surely changed over 36 months.
The Filipino was a streaking multi-division commodity upon meeting Bradley for the first time in June 2012, and, even upon dropping a split decision that some considered among the worst ever, moved on to a big-money revisit with Juan Manuel Marquez.
Bradley, the winner, was left to lesser lights.
Pacquiao evened the official score with Bradley with a more convincing performance in April 2014, but after misfiring in the May 2 showdown with Floyd Mayweather Jr. and suffering a shoulder injury that’ll keep him out for the better part of a year, he’ll ultimately need a foe to help gauge his comeback.
Bradley could be that guy.
HBO’s Jim Lampley opined after the second fight that a third between the men would someday occur, and that get-together early in 2016 would provide as big a crossroads event as either could construct.
In fact, if this were old-school wrestling, sign us up for a loser-leaves-town match.
2. Floyd Mayweather Jr.
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When it comes to Floyd Mayweather Jr., Bradley has politics and sentiment on his side—but not time.
Money insisted after his May 2 sinking of Manny Pacquiao that he’d linger for just one more fight in September, before moving on to his collections of promoted fighters and obscenely priced automobiles.
Bradley’s defeat of Vargas essentially made him the heir apparent to Mayweather’s WBO championship throne, and Desert Storm has been on the record in the past saying he’d love to get a crack at the guy he considers the best in the welterweight division.
But, as he suggested to CBSSports.com last year, making a Mayweather fight wouldn’t be something for which he’d risk his long-term financial wherewithal with promoter Bob Arum.
“I can probably never go and stick the gun up to Bob and say ‘I want that fight,'” Bradley said.
“I'm not going to mess up my business doing a foolish move like that. But Floyd says over and over and over and over, ‘I'm my own boss. I do what I want to do.' If he's his own boss and if he wants the fight, he can make the fight happen. If he wanted to fight me, he could fight me, no problem. But if he's not willing to work with my people, then it's not going to happen.”
Bradley vs. Mayweather might have been better 18 months ago, but it still beats a lot of options.
1. Gennady Golovkin
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Though a cadre of foes at 154 and 160 pounds seem loath to approach Gennady Golovkin and his two middleweight championship belts, a welterweight Bradley appears eager to run into the fire.
He described himself to CBSSports.com as a “businessman,” a “journeyman” and a “throwback” while suggesting he’d be willing to pursue big fights wherever they might be available. He specifically mentioned other fighters’ reticence to get in with a foe who’s not gone the distance since 2008.
“Don't nobody want to fight Triple-G,” he said. “Yeah, he's a beast, he's an animal. But s--t, I'm a man. I got balls. I'm a man, I got balls and I got skills. I'll get in there with that big old dude.”
He said he’d be willing to meet Golovkin later this year if the IBO/WBA champion’s people were to call Sunday morning, and Team Golovkin’s chief executive—promoter Tom Loeffler—told Bleacher Report that it’s indeed an intriguing possibility pending the availability of other potential opponents.
“(Bradley is) one of the few well-known guys that has said he would fight GGG, so it would be something that we would consider,” Loeffler said. “Bradley beat Manny once and beat Marquez, the guy that KO’d Manny, so he definitely has a recognizable name. He wasn’t on our radar screen before he said he wanted to fight GGG.”
When it comes to prurient fight fan interest, no other foe compares.
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