Timothy Bradley vs Jessie Vargas *UPDATE* For vacant WBO welterweight championship

Non title fight at 147lbs.

Bradley coming off a bad 2014 where he lost his rematch to Pacquiao and then got robbed in a split draw with Chaves.

Vargas is undefeated(26-0) but has very little power. He also holds the secondary WBA 'regular' super lightweight championship. Step up in class for the California native.

Bradley a class above Vargas and thats it really, can't see anything other than a Bradley decision

WHU_Champo_League_in_7Yrs wrote:Bradley a class above Vargas and thats it really, can't see anything other than a Bradley decision

Not quite sure what Bradley gains from this fight TBH.

Top Rank could've matched him up with Brandon Rios, he's rather limited, but at least he will hurl a few big punches.

He gets a trinket to take in to future negotiations.

PaulHv2 wrote:He gets a trinket to take in to future negotiations.

There's no title on the line.

Rios is always there for anyone really, win or lose. He's a throwback guy, limited and may lose quite often but always delivers good fights

WHU_Champo_League_in_7Yrs wrote:Rios is always there for anyone really, win or lose. He's a throwback guy, limited and may lose quite often but always delivers good fights

What's the point then? This guys a titling holder so the belt should be on the line, as bad as a Danny Garcia fight

PaulHv2 wrote:What's the point then? This guys a titling holder so the belt should be on the line, as bad as a Danny Garcia fight

Vargas holds a title at 140lbs, this is a welterweight bout.

He's moving up in weight Hampo, bit of a nothing fight but all the top men know there will be three vacant titles fairly soon.

Welterweight is about to get exciting now. I would love to see a welterweight tournament similar to the one Super Middleweight had.

You have Khan,Maidana,Brook,Thurman,Garcia,Bradley etc. Imagine getting all these guys to fight one another.

You also have Broner and Porter. This division is stacked with talent.

Never happen,but one can dream.

Somehow despite Timothy Bradley being 0-1-1 in his last two fights, he will be fighting for Manny's old championship against Jessie Vargas.

Should Bradley win, I'd expect to see a rubber fight with Manny or a rematch with Marquez.

Devalues world titles when you can get shots you haven't earned.

Hammersmith harrier wrote:Devalues world titles when you can get shots you haven't earned.

+1

Glad I'm not the only one that thinks Bradley got totally robbed against Chaves

Hopefully this'll set up the Khan fight I would've loved to see at 140 (i.e. assuming TB wins).

That said, delusional prat Khan will probably still do nothing other than talk up a 'Money' fight.

Hopefully my (and some of ours) initial reaction is this is just a tune up fight for Khan in late September before Ramadan

Saying that Khan will probably chase FMJ around only for the latter to fight Brook in his last fight. #chucklingalready

Not sure these boys @ 147 have really gone about getting a lucrative Mayweather fight. They could have quite easily set up their own "winner takes all" agreement with Floyd that the winner of a four man tournie fights him, fighters would be: Khan/Brook/Thurman/Bradley. Makes sense to me. Saying that, this is boxing so sense goes out of the window when it comes to us fans getting what we want.

TopHat24/7 wrote:Hopefully this'll set up the Khan fight I would've loved to see at 140 (i.e. assuming TB wins).

That said, delusional prat Khan will probably still do nothing other than talk up a 'Money' fight.

Khan has to forget about chasing that fight. If it happens, happy days! If it doesn't so be it. Plenty of other options out there.

I would personally love to see Khan and Brook fight, then the winner could fight Thurman or Bradley. Add Porter to the mix and there are some big fights in Welter for Khan.

I really do believe that Mayweather will go for Khan in September, good fight imo and once Floyd spanks him he can ride off into the sunset

Floyd wont stop at 49-0. He will fight Pacquiao again

Am I the only one who couldn't care less about 'beating' this 49-0 business?

Winds me up when I hear people talking about going for the 'record' that Marciano set. As if Rocky set a benchmark which has never been surpassed and which is some kind of measuring stick or mark to aspire to for all fighters. Usain Bolt's 9.58 over the 100m is a 'record.' Steffi Graf's 377 weeks as the WTA's number one-ranked player is a record. Brazil's five World Cups are a record.

Marciano's 49-0 is just a statistic. Olivares went 62-0 before losing. Chavez was 87-0 before Whitaker put the first blemish on his record. Granted, they didn't finish their careers undefeated like Rocky did, and neither have the same historical status as him, but in a sport where not everyone is facing the same field or depth of opposition and where everyone can take a different career path to the top than the next man, those kind of stats don't mean anything.

I genuinely believe Mayweather when he says that 50-0 would mean nothing to him in terms of the actual number. If it comes, it comes, but there seems to be an idea growing that beating Marciano's statistic of 49-0 would somehow mean Mayweather has really proved something and given his legacy a massive boost. Not for me.

88Chris05 wrote:Am I the only one who couldn't care less about 'beating' this 49-0 business?

Winds me up when I hear people talking about going for the 'record' that Marciano set. As if Rocky set a benchmark which has never been surpassed and which is some kind of measuring stick or mark to aspire to for all fighters. Usain Bolt's 9.58 over the 100m is a 'record.' Steffi Graf's 377 weeks as the WTA's number one-ranked player is a record. Brazil's five World Cups are a record.

Marciano's 49-0 is just a statistic. Olivares went 62-0 before losing. Chavez was 87-0 before Whitaker put the first blemish on his record. Granted, they didn't finish their careers undefeated like Rocky did, and neither have the same historical status as him, but in a sport where not everyone is facing the same field or depth of opposition and where everyone can take a different career path to the top than the next man, those kind of stats don't mean anything.

I genuinely believe Mayweather when he says that 50-0 would mean nothing to him in terms of the actual number. If it comes, it comes, but there seems to be an idea growing that beating Marciano's statistic of 49-0 would somehow mean Mayweather has really proved something and given his legacy a massive boost. Not for me.

Yeah the Marciano thing doesn't hold too much ground for me. Think 50-0 looks more pleasing than 49-0.

Perhaps that is a bit of ocd from me.

To be really pedantic, 49-0 is the record for the longest unbroken winning streak in boxing.

Hammersmith harrier wrote:To be really pedantic, 49-0 is the record for the longest unbroken winning streak in boxing.

Does Ricardo Lopez count? suppose a draw is still a blemish, so he doesn't have a perfect record.

I prefer 49. The number just looks a little more pleasing to me than 50. Which is surprising because I hate the number 4 (my girlfriend doesn't understand it, and if I'm honest, neither do I). Almost perfect. It's like Bradman's 99.94.

Shouldn't affect Mayweather, though. Probably more important is the $41 million pay day

As an aside, Chris why did you inverted commas Bolt's 9.58?

AdamT wrote:

Hammersmith harrier wrote:To be really pedantic, 49-0 is the record for the longest unbroken winning streak in boxing.

Does Ricardo Lopez count? suppose a draw is still a blemish, so he doesn't have a perfect record.

Sniffing the glue again Adam?

Coxy001 wrote:

AdamT wrote:

Hammersmith harrier wrote:To be really pedantic, 49-0 is the record for the longest unbroken winning streak in boxing.

Does Ricardo Lopez count? suppose a draw is still a blemish, so he doesn't have a perfect record.

Sniffing the glue again Adam?

Naw it is probably the lack of drugs to be honest!!

Appreciate that, Hammersmith. Obviously I'm talking from my own perspective, though. For me it's just so heavily caveated that it really doesn't mean much more than it would if Golovkin were to go past Monzon's fourteen lineal Middleweight defences by beating someone like Heiland for the fifteenth defence of his WBA belt. Strictly speaking he'd have defended a world Middleweight title more times than Monzon, but it sure as hell wouldn't make him a greater Middlweight than Carlos was.

Likewise, Marciano's 49-0 doesn't make him the superior or even equal of all the fighters who didn't manage to maintain an unbeaten record for that long. Beating the other markers I mentioned above means that a man, woman or team have clearly and definitelvely done something at a higher level than all before them, even if it is a one-off case. Because of the vagaries of boxing, I don't think it really applies in Rocky's case, hence I tend to see it as just a stat more than anything else.

If people view it as a record then fine, no issue with that, because as you say strictly speaking it is. I just don't think it holds any water as one, really. Mayweather's a far greater fighter than Marciano with or without a fiftieth win on his record, or an '0' at the end of it.

Find it perverse how a guy that's beaten better opposition than Marciano.....Been universally regarded as the best p4p for years and been at or around the top of the game for 17 years.... Going past Marciano's 49-0 can mean diddly......

"Heavily caveated"....Really ??..........

Or be dismissed in the same context as an alphabet stiff slapper beating a 14 defence record..

You can do better than that !!

The two situations are not at all similar; Monzon has 14 defences of the lineal, undisputed, universally recognised world middleweight title whereas Golovkin has 14 defences of a belt nothing more.

Truss, I know you've got a very, very sensitive radar when it comes to anything which can be perceived as criticism (or simply non-praise) of Mayweather, but it's gone in to overdrive there.

I'm arguing that him going 50-0 wouldn't mean that much to me because he's already proved his greatness. Whatever evidence we need to put him ahead of Marciano was produced long before he even got close to that half-century mark. If he beats a couple of safe bets such as Garcia and Postol and then retires 50-0, does hitting that mark suddenly mean his credentials to be considered the greatest boxer ever are significantly better than they are right now, while he's 48-0? Not for me.

Even if he got to that mark with a couple of really remarkable or stylistically fresh wins, such as Andrade at 154 and then Golovkin at 160, again the fact that it was number 50 would be pretty incidental to me. It'd be the fact that it was Andrade and Golovkin which would enhance his claim to all-time supriority greatly, not the fact that they were numbers 49 and 50.

I just feel that the significance of Marciano's 49-0 is overstated. I don't see it as THE statistic that fighters should want to chase or aspire to. Considering Rocky's opposition, skill set in comparison to other greats, lack of title fights etc I don't think it deserves to have the same caché as some of the proper records I listed earlier. Calzaghe went 46-0, but if Froch had won all of his 35 fights up until this point and then went up to Light-Heavy to beat either Kovalev or Stevenson, the fact that he'd won ten fights less than Joe wouldn't matter a jot to me - he'd belong above him regardless of that in my eyes.

Hammersmith, I didn't say Monzon and Golovkin's defence records amounted to the same thing or a similar situation, clearly they don't. I said that Marciano's so-called 'record' is as flimsy to me as Golovkin's 160 lb defence 'record' would / will be if he retained his WBA belt against a few more gatekeepers. Plenty of Middleweights with less title fights at the weight belong ahead of Golovkin, and plenty of fighters from right across the divisions deserve to be ahead of Marciano regardless of not having stayed unbeaten for 49 fights like he did.

I was more sensitive about comparing it to Golovkin's future 15 defences..

You're just over-sensitive in general, go change your Mayweather-tampon you silly tart....

Moving on...