By Scott Gilfoid: Golden Boy Promotions isn’t helping their young star WBC lightweight champion Adrien Broner (25-0, 21 KO’s) by setting him up with sick mismatches like his scheduled February 16th mismatch against Britain’s Gavin Rees (37-1-1, 18 KO’s) at the Boardwalk Hall in Atlantic City, New Jersey. Fights like this aren’t helping Broner become a bigger star nor is putting him with reluctant fighters like Ricky Burns, who the American boxing public has never heard aside from the hardcore fans.
Broner is going to destroy Rees within few rounds and the fans will get nothing from this fight. Broner needs to move up to 140 where he can at least find some halfway decent talent to compete with. The lightweight division is devoid of any real talent, and it’s a waste of Broner’s career for him to be chasing down fights against guys that don’t want to fight.
Broner needs to lose this division and move up in weight because beating up Brits like Rees and Burns isn’t interesting, and I don’t want to see Broner fight Miguel Vazquez, the IBF champion. Broner is simply too good for this division, and the fighters are too small to interest the casual boxing fans. It seems like 140 and above are what fans are interested in seeing and anything below that doesn’t attract a lot of interest, especially when the fights are sick mismatches like the Broner vs. Rees fight.
The undercard fight between heavyweights Seth Mitchell and Johnathon Banks isn’t any better the main event. Neither of these guys is going far in the heavyweight division, and it’s pretty obvious by looking at their previous fight last November, which ended with Banks knocking Mitchell out in the 2nd round.
I see the same thing happening on February 16th, and I’m still surprised that Golden Boy is interested in having this fight as part of the HBO telecast. I’m surprised that HBO agreed to allow that fight on the card, because they should have said no because it doesn’t promise to be competitive. Banks has too much experience for Mitchell and we’re going to see the same thing happening as the first fight.
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