By Ryan Burton
Last week in an article by BoxingScene's Keith Idec, former two division champion Tim Bradley said that a rematch with Ruslan Provodnikov had lost it's luster following his loss to Chris Aligieri.
“He lost to a guy no one really knew,” Bradley said of Provodnikov. “The remedy is just to out-box him. The first time I chose to slug. The second time around, it’d be even easier because I won’t stand there and fight with this guy. I’d fight my fight. But like I said before, I was waiting for this guy to build his stock, come up and earn the rematch, man. He won a championship [from Mike Alvarado], but he just lost his title. So it’s like, where do we go from here? I’ve got a loss. I’ve just suffered my first loss. This is his third loss, but at the same time I lost to one of the best fighters of this generation. So there’s a different level there."
The two fighters engaged in 2013's Fight of the Year but both have lost their first bouts of 2014. Provodnikov lost to the aforementioned Aligieri while Bradley lost an unanimous decision to Manny Pacquiao in April.
Provodnikov said that if Bradley can beat him so "easy", he should want to prove it in the ring and pointed to the numerous slips that he feels should have been ruled knockdowns in their March 2013 fight.
"Well Aligieri also said he was going to box me and that it would be easy for him but he got knocked down twice in the first round and was surviving the rest of the fight while hoping that the local doctor pulls him through the fight and doesn't stop the fight when his eye was completely closed.
"I think Algieri did better with his plan because I knocked Bradley out in the first round of our fight. In boxing you can never fall twice off your feet and not get at least a knockdown. Bradley should thank his neighbor Pat Russell. The referee allowed for a lot of slipping on Bradley's part in the first round, or maybe he had ankle problems again just like he's been having in every Pacquiao fight," Provodnikov told BoxingScene.com.
The fighter known as the "Siberian Rocky said that Bradley's comments don't really mean anything to him and that he hopes to secure a rematch so he can do his talking with his fists.
"Talk doesn't mean anything. I do my talking in the ring," said Provodnikov.
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