Yuriorkis Gamboa passes on Timothy Bradley fight

Yuriorkis Gamboa has decided not to risk a major jump in weight to fight Timothy Bradley, and BoxingScene.com reports that the fight, which had been rumored for March, won't be happening.

Gamboa says -- quite logically, I might add -- that jumping from 130 pounds (where he just struggled a bit in a return against Michael Farenas) to welterweight to face Timothy Bradley is simply too big of a leap. Any fool could have figured that out, but the idea had at least some legitimacy to it, as Bradley hasn't fought since last June and the search to find him an opponent fit for TV has become increasingly desperate (or indifferent, maybe), and Gamboa is working with promoters who might have trouble finding him major fights.

To me, it seemed like Top Rank was trying to use Gamboa as a means of getting Bradley back into an HBO main event, in a fight that was more experiment than anything on paper, but not totally uninteresting. Bradley would have been a major favorite, I have to think, and that would have been ideal for Top Rank.