By Scott Gilfoid: WBC lightweight champion Adrien Broner (26-0, 22 KO’s) says he and WBA World welterweight champion Paulie Malignaggi (32-4, 7 KO’s) can still be friends after he whips him on June 22nd on Showtime at the Barclays Center, in Brooklyn, New York, USA.
Broner told Dan Rafael “I’ll kick his a** and then we can be friends.”
As for Broner no longer fighting on HBO, Broner said “I’m still Mr. HBO and I always will be.”
Broner’s promoters at Golden Boy have been 86ed by HBO, and will no longer be able to have their fighters televised on the network. It seems kind of a complicated issue that goes a lot deeper than simply HBO losing Floyd Mayweather Jr. and Saul “Canelo” Alvarez to Showtime.
Apparently, Golden Boy CEO Richard Schaefer has put a lot of pressure on HBO in the past for specific dates that his fighters, as well as specific match-ups that he wanted for them.
If Schaefer didn’t like he was hearing from HBO, he would mention that his fighters could end up leaving HBO for Showtime. We saw Golden Boy fighters Amir Khan and Canelo leave HBO last year, and then with Mayweather leaving HBO, it kind of was the tipping point.
Broner seems to really like HBO, but the only way he’s going to be able to still have his fights with the network is if he leaves Golden Boy next month when his contract expires and signs with another promoter like SMS Promotions headed by 50 Cent or possibly Top Rank.
The problem with Broner signing with Top Rank is he’ll be stuck fighting Manny Pacquiao at the end of his career, and then he’d be trapped in fights against Tim Bradley, Mike Alvarado and Brandon Rios.
The Bradley fight would be a big deal, but Rios and Alvarado aren’t big names, and it wouldn’t be as interesting. But what would be really bad is if Broner had to fight them over and over in rematches due to Top Rank not having enough fighters at that weight for Broner to compete against.
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