While we've already talked about Timothy Bradley's early analysis of Manny Pacquiao being a beatable fighter for him on June, let's talk about money a little bit. Lance Pugmire of the Los Angeles Times reports that Bradley will make by far a career-best payday, as everyone knew he would, receiving the same $5 million guarantee given to Shane Mosley and Juan Manuel Marquez last year against Pacquiao -- or at least close to it.

Bradley declined to reveal terms of his agreement, which he said could be signed as early as Friday, but fight promoter Bob Arum said there was no reason to doubt that Bradley will have around the same $5-million guarantee that Pacquiao's most recent two opponents had.

Bradley (28-0, 12 KO) has made seven-figure paydays for fights against Devon Alexander (about $1.1 million) and Joel Casamayor ($1.025 million), but obviously this is another level. This is the big time. This is big time money.

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Timothy Bradley is very excited about his upcoming fight against Manny Pacquiao on June 9th at the MGM Grand. Honestly, he should be extremely excited. Fighting in front of millions of fans on PPV is significantly different than fighting in front of a couple thousand at Agua Caliente. Bradley has been looking forward to this fight for a long time, which he recently told Lance Pugmire at The Los Angeles Times.

"This is about being the No. 1 fighter in the world, and that's what my goal has been for as long as I can remember. "I've been waiting for this my whole life."

Bradley does have a good bit of seasoning on him, even going into hostile territory to take the world title from Junior Witter. Witter is an extremely awkward fighter, and in his prime, it was difficult to look good against him.

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Today it was announced that Diego Magdaleno was going to take on Miguel Bertran Jr for the NABF super featherweight title. The fight will take place in Tucson in the Casino del Sol and will be airing on Showtime. If shows in Tucson sound familiar then consider yourself a ridiculous boxing fan. Another venue in the Tucson area used to be used for a bimonthly boxing show at the Desert Diamond ran by Golden Boy from 2004 to 2009. Before that Sugar Ray Leonard ran shows at this casino.

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This piece of news may come as a shock to most of you, but to try to keep it together. Bob Arum wants to wait at least two fights before letting him get a shot a Sergio Martinez according to Bob Velin of USA Today. No, Arum isn't using the ‘we need to let the fight marinate' excuse. This time he is using a ‘he is making progress' excuse.

"Obviously, Chavez is going to end up fighting Martinez. I think they know that," Arum said. "But he's not going to fight him next. You have to understand, Chavez is getting better and better, but there's still room for improvement, there's still stuff that Freddie wants to see.

"I would think Chavez would have two more fights and then fight Martinez."

"It's stupid to take a kid like Chavez and throw him in before my matchmakers and Freddie agree he's ready. He's getting there. If he wasn't getting there, we'd probably say, 'What the hell, what have we got to lose? But he is getting there, and I was very, very impressed with him in the last fight."

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Tomorrow's Friday Night Fights on ESPN2 will be live at 9 p.m. EST from the Mohegan Sun in Connecticut, and Bad Left Hook will have live round-by-round coverage, but let's bring up something important before we get to the weights.

There has been a story going around from the Boxing 360 promotional outfit -- they say they're the promoter of record for 36-year-old Angel Hernandez, and that he is unfit to fight, saying he now slurs his speech. Hernandez is a late sub to face Demetrius Andrade tomorrow night in the FNF main event.

Boxing 360 does not have the best reputation in the world, and I'm not going to pretend that they do. But any mention of something like this is cause for concern.

"We are the promoter of record for Angel Hernandez and we want to protect him from himself. Angel is not able to compete physically. Angel has a warrior heart but he is done. We will do everything to protect him for getting hurt against a great fighter like Andrade."

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An absolutely fantastic study from a group of physicians from the Cleveland Clinic has found that the combination of headgear and boxing gloves do nothing to lessen damage from a rotational strike. This study involved a crash dummy head and weighted pendulum effectively simulating a punch. The punch could either be linear (jabs, straights, crosses, etc.) or rotational punches (hooks). The metric used in this study is the amount of force that was experienced by the head (units of gs) or the rotational velocity of the head (units of rad/sec).

Five different combinations of protective gear were chosen in this study: bare knuckle - bare head (control), MMA gloves - bare head, boxing gloves - bare head, protective headgear - bare hands, and protective headgear - boxing gloves. Also the punches can be either low impact or high impact.

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The WBC is making Sergio Martinez the mandatory for Julio Cesar Chavez Jr's WBC middleweight title. The huge grain of salt that needs to be taken with this story is the fact that the WBC has done this before.

At their convention at the end of December, they agreed to make Sergio Martinez the mandatory challenger for Julio Cesar Chavez Jr, but then they backed out of it in a bad way. Usually, the challenger is given some kind of walk-away money so that the titleholder can take on another fighter.

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Golden Boy's Richard Schaefer says that a co-feature fight for the May 19 HBO card featuring Lamont Peterson vs Amir Khan in a rematch at Mandalay Bay is close to being done. The fight would be another 140-pound duel, between Lucas Matthysse of Argentina and Mexico's Humberto Soto.

From Rick Reeno:

"We're getting close to getting Humberto Soto against Lucas Mattghysse as the opening bout. This is another barnburner. This is another fight that has 'Fight of The Year' written all over it. I can't remember the last time that HBO or anyone else had a doubleheader, a one-two punch like that - Soto and Matthysse and Peterson and Khan. It doesn't get any better than that," Schaefer said.

On the topic of quality, Schaefer is of course slightly overselling this as OH MY GOD, THIS IS, LIKE, ONCE IN A LIFETIME, YOU GUYS! because there have been plenty of HBO cards with doubleheaders of this quality, but in all seriousness, it would be a really good doubleheader.

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Bob Arum is giddy about Julio Cesar Chavez Jr's performance last Saturday in San Antonio against Marco Antonio Rubio, and says that during the course of this year, he'll become the best middleweight in the world.

From BoxingScene.com:

"You saw a guy who started as a kid become a man. In a few more months and a little better training camp where he isn't just taking off the weight, he will beat any middleweight in the world. Any middleweight. Martinez, Margarito, Cotto, any of them," exclaimed Arum.

Well, Arum did actually name one middleweight (Martinez) there, so I guess that's something. Antonio Margarito and Miguel Cotto are blown up welterweights fighting at junior middleweight, with one of them (Margarito) not even fighting well. Saying that Chavez could beat Margarito isn't exactly a big statement at this point. Why not mention Ricardo Mayorga, too?

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With Carl Froch somewhat surprisingly named the IBF's super middleweight mandatory challenger last night, Froch's promoter Eddie Hearn of Matchroom Boxing is hoping to bring titlist Lucian Bute to Nottingham for a May 5 date, with a return bout set for later this year in Canada.

From the Daily Mail:

"Positive discussions have been ongoing with Interbox since the Super Six final and we hope to get this fight made. It is Carl's dream to have his next fight in the UK and that is something very important to both of us.

"After recent discussions, I believe we can bring Lucian here in May and we will be happy to give him the rematch in Canada once Carl has taken the IBF title from him."

As detailed last night, Bute can turn this down for the time being, but he (InterBox) would have to pay a $20,000 fee to the IBF to waive the fight for the time being, and he'd be obligated to fight Froch after an interim bout. That may wind up happening, or Froch might have to just go to Canada to fight Bute if that's the fight they absolutely, 100% want next.

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