Golden Boy will have to move Adrien Broner up to 140 at least if they want to find any big fights for him

By Allan Fox: Former WBO super featherweight champion Adrien Broner (24-0, 20 KO’s) is moving in the right direction by moving up one division to the lightweight division following a 5th round TKO win over Vincente Escobedo last month on HBO. However, that move isn’t going to be a big enough one for the 23-year-old Broner to find any halfway decent fights at that weight.

The problem that Broner has is that the lightweight division is just as empty of talent as the super featherweight division was, and there’s really no one to fight at that weight class that boxing fans really care about. Under the best of circumstances, Broner could get fights against the following guys at 135: Ricky Burns, Antonio DeMarco, Miguel Vazquez, Jorge Linares, Kevin Mitchell or Yuriorkis Gamboa. However, the reality is that Broner likely won’t get any of those guys in the ring anytime soon, at least not in October when he expects to be back in the ring.

Broner might have to wait a year or more to find some of those guys and it’s frankly not worth the time expenditure to wait on those fights. There’s no real plus in waiting a year to fight DeMarco or Burns. Broner’s promoters at Golden Boy should look to push Broner past the lightweight division altogether and instead look to have him campaign at light welterweight [140 lbs]. In that weight division Broner would have a number of guys for him to fight like Amir Khan, Danny Garcia, Juan Manuel Marquez, Lucas Matthysse, Brandon Rios, Mike Alvarado, Ajose Olusegun, Lamont Peterson, Zab Judah, Erik Morales and Humberto Soto.

That division is much better than the lightweight division and there would be much less wait time for Broner to have to wait in between important fights. If Broner stays at lightweight for the next year or two, he’ll have little to show for it even against the best fighters in the division. Few boxing fans care about the lightweight division right now outside of the hardcore boxing fans and this means that Broner needs to skip past that weight class if he’s smart.