Adrien Broner to fight on February 16th in Atlantic City

By Boxing News - 12/18/2012 - Comments

broner564By Scott Gilfoid: WBC lightweight champion Adrien Broner (25-0, 21 KO’s) will be back in the ring on February 16th in Atlantic City, New Jersey, according to Golden Boy Promotions CEO Richard Schaefer. Up until it wasn’t known where the talented Broner would be fighting next, but now Schaefer has revealed the location at least. Heavyweights Johnathon Banks and Seth Mitchell will be fighting a rematch on the undercard.

Unfortunately, we won’t be seeing Broner fighting a unification bout with WBO lightweight champion Ricky Burns, as his promoter Alex Morrison has stated that Burns will be fighting on January 26th against a still to be determined opponent in Glasgow, Scotland.

Burns will be making a defense of his World Boxing Organization title, and then possibly he could be facing Broner later in the year if the fight can be negotiated. Burns and Morrison passed on the opportunity to fight Broner on February 16th, because they wanted to get in another fight before that.

Broner also won’t be fighting Richard Abril, because he plans on facing Sharif Bogere on March 2nd to fight for the vacant World Boxing Association lightweight strap, so that’s not an opponent that Broner will be getting either.

The options are now pretty slim for Broner unless he chooses to fight Yuriorkis Gamboa, which I don’t think is possible. Gamboa’s promoter 50 Cent said recently that he’d like to match Gamboa up with Broner in the near future, but I doubt that 50 Cent would be willing to move Gamboa up another division right away to fight Broner after Gamboa’s recent performance against Michael Farenas.

Gamboa moved up from featherweight to super featherweight for that fight and he looked vulnerable. 50 Cent won’t want to move Gamboa up yet another division to face a guy like Broner, who fights in the mid-140 range.

Other than Gamboa, Broner’s options are guys like Raymundo Beltran and Jorge Linares as possibilities for Broner. I doubt that Linares would take the fight but Beltran is an option, although not a good option.

That’s probably who Broner will face unfortunately. HBO will say yes to a guy like Beltran after his recent wins over Henry Lundy and Ji-Hoon Kim. I like Beltran but I see him as an ESPN2 type fighter, and I don’t want to see Broner wasting one of his fights on this guy. Broner is better off moving up in weight to fight someone else if he can’t Gamboa in the ring because fighting Beltran would be like throwing a fight away, because Broner would get nothing from it.



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