Adrien Broner and “The Problem”

By Boxing News - 02/19/2013 - Comments

broner94By Ben Walton: Last Saturday night, lightweight champ Adrien “The Problem” Broner successfully defended his WBC title in Atlantic city New Jersey, against Welshman Gavin Rees, Taking his record to 26-0 with 22 KO’s.

Superstar in the making Broner 23, is hotly tipped to become a P4P great after already winning belts in two weight divisions.

After a slow start, The problem Stepped up the pace in the 3rd round, going on to drop the game Rees in the 4th and again in the 5th, forcing the traveling Welshman’s corner to throw in the towel.

For the benefit of analysis, what I would like to pick up on is what happened in rounds 1, and 2.

In my opinion the older, smaller, weaker, and less skilful Rees won both of these rounds, catching Broner at will and giving a real good account of himself.

Now we all know how good Broner is offensively, his record speaks for itself and indeed Rees himself said after the fight, that Broner possesses amazing power. This is not in dispute. (But then again even I could look amazing against an 80-1 underdog.)

What I’m worried about is his Defense. It’s clear he models his boxing on the Mayweather style shoulder roll, who possibly in turn took a lot of his style from the great Charley Burley before him. Both of these guys, masters of defense. Now it takes a great skill set to be able to pull this style off successfully. the sweet science of boxing is based on the principles of distance, leverage and timing and its the control of the distance that enables the other two.

It’s no good using the shoulder roll if you don’t have all other things in the right balance or it just won’t work. Ask Andre Berto. ( Berto made a monumental cock-up by bizarrely trying this in his Loss to Guerrero).

For me Broner gets hit easily. Too easily. He took more shots in them two rounds than Floyd did in his last two fights.

I’m expecting a backlash here but I’m not here to make friends, this is a debate: I think Broner will find himself with very real “problems” when he comes up against a clever fighter who uses movement/angles, has power and also a good defense. We have seen it so many times before, Jeff Lacey was the next Mike Tyson before he met Joe Calzaghe, and who can forget the slick, atomic bomb punching Naseem Hamed? Destroying all before him, before he was really tested and found out against Barrera. Emphatically.

Against ponce de Leon, Broner went 3 rounds down at the start, was out punched by the lesser skilled former champ throughout the fight, and most in attendance that night thought Broner lost. The boos echoed around the arena to emphasize the point.

What happens if he moves up to light welter and is put in with Timothy Bradley? Or even the big punching Maidana? I’m looking forward to finding out, but first of all its the unification fight with Ricky Burns that needs to happen. Broner should win this but I have a sneaky feeling it will not be a walk in the park by any stretch of the imagination. Ricky is the type of fighter that could quiet possibly give him fits if he’s not 100% on his game, with his movement around the ring, good defense and great jab its not completely out of the question for burns to take a points decision. If it was in Scotland.

For the time being I will carry on watching Broner who is very entertaining due to his punch power and showmanship, but I will be having a closer eye on his defense before I jump to any conclusions on whether he is the next Floyd Mayweather Jr. On last Saturdays showing, for me, he’s nowhere near that level just yet..



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