By Scott Gilfoid: It kind of goes without saying that the UK’s Gavin Rees (37-1-1, 18 Kos) is badly over his head against WBC lightweight champion Adrien Broner (25-0, 21 KO’s) in their scheduled February 16th fight at the Boardwalk Hall in Atlantic City, New Jersey. Rees is older, slower, weaker, less skilled defensively, and fighting away from the UK in the United States.
I mean, there is nothing at all that Rees has in his favor for this fight. I would give Rees an advantage in experience but I really can’t because he’s only faced one halfway decent fighter in his entire 15 year pro career and that was Andriy Kotelnick, who stopped Rees in the 12th round in 2008.
Other than that one fight, Rees has faced pretty 2nd and 3rd tier domestic and European level fodder and not the quality opposition that Broner has been facing. It’s too bad because Rees should have done something about his lack of quality opposition ages ago because he’s just four years from 2008 to 2012 facing weak opponents.
Rees said “I am confident I can upset the odds on February 16th and become a two-division World champion. I’ve got the edge when it comes to experience…I believe that besides Antonio DeMarco, I’m the toughest opponent he’s faced, and I believe I’m going to cause him plenty of trouble.”
This isn’t the toughest fight for Broner, not even close to that. It’s not even on the radar. Rees isn’t facing Derry Mathews on February 16th. He’ll find that out quickly when he gets in the ring with Broner.
I rate Rees below many of Broner’s former opponents. I see Rees as like maybe the 9th best opponent Broner has faced in his career behind Antonio DeMarco, Vincente Escobedo, Eloy Perez, Vincente Rodriguez, Daniel Ponce De Leon, Jason Litzau, William Kickett and Fernando Quintero. Those guys were all really good fighters and clearly better than Rees and Broner handled most of them with ease. De Leon and Quintero were really hard fights for Broner, but he passed those tests with flying colors.
Comments are closed.