Following this past weekend’s fights on ESPN, analyst Timothy Bradley Jr. takes some time to share his thoughts on the light heavyweight division with Canelo Alvarez moving up to face Sergey Kovalev and some good potential fights out there. Check it out...
On Canelo moving up to the light heavyweight division:
“Canelo’s a smaller guy coming up to this weight class, man. He’s gonna take that risk because Kovalev — Kovalev is kind of watered down a little bit. You know, he’s been a little long in the tooth, he’s a little long in the tooth so I think that’s the reason he’s taking that risk. He sees the opportunity to break Kovalev down to the body — that’s his specialty.
“So he’s ready to go up to 175lbs against a guy like that, but a guy like Beterbiev? I don’t think so. I don’t think so. I don’t think he wants that. I don’t think Canelo wants that! That’s pain!”
On how he thinks a Beterbiev-Bivol fight plays out:
“Oh, that’s an interesting fight because Bivol is a bad boy. Man, I’ma give the slight edge to Beterbiev. Bivol is a smaller guy, man. He’s a small lil’ light heavyweight. Great fundamentals, good power, punches hard with both hands as well, he has the punching power that can probably get the respect of Beterbiev but you saw [against Gvozdyk], nothing deterred that guy. Nothing stopped him from coming. He took it and kept coming, kept coming just willed him, just destroyed Gvozdyk. And I thought, honestly, I thought Gvozdyk was gonna be able to outbox him.
“I’m not gonna lie. Gvozdyk was supposed to win this fight in my opinion because he was the boxer...when you look at the style, when you look at the skill, you see one guy has more, can do more. But then you see the pure will, he didn’t have that. That was the other guy, that was Beterbiev, he had that will, that will to win.”