By Dan Ambrose: WBC lightweight champion Adrien Broner (26-0, 22 KO’s) sees himself becoming the first boxer to ever make one billion dollars in the sport. However, at this point it’s questionable whether he’ll ever be a pay per view attraction, period.
While he does bring in good ratings on Showtime and previously did on HBO when he fought on that network, he lacks big name opposition needed for him to be catapulted to a huge PPV star like his hero Floyd Mayweather Jr. Golden Boy wants Broner to be a huge PPV star, but he’s not going to get there facing the likes Lamont Peterson, Danny Garcia, Lucas Matthysse, Amir Khan, Ricky Burns, Devon Alexander, Kell Brook, Paulie Malignaggi, Victor Ortiz or Keith Thurman.
Those guys aren’t big enough stars for Broner to become a mega PPV attraction if he were to beat them.
What Broner needs is a win over WBA/WBC junior middleweight champion Saul “Canelo” Alvarez in the future for him to become the huge, huge PPV star that he’s dreaming of. It’s not that Canelo is a big star now, but he’s the most popular fighter in boxing when you remove Manny Pacquiao and Floyd Mayweather Jr. from the equation because Broner is not going to ever get a fight against either of those guys. The only fighter left is Canelo, who is more popular for being popular rather than for anything he’s accomplished in the ring.
Since Canelo is much more popular than Broner that’ll mean that Broner will have to move up to 154 for that one fight and likely agree to fight Canelo in Texas with open scoring like the situation with Canelo’s last fight against former WBA light middleweight champion Austin Trout last April at the Alamodome in San Antonio, Texas.
Broner, 5’7”, doesn’t have a huge frame and would likely be entering the ring at close to 150 against a 170+ Canelo. In other words, Broner would be in the same situation that Mayweather would be in if he were to agree to fight Canelo right now.
Broner would have to accept that reality because he wouldn’t have the fan base or the pull to be able to negotiate a weight limit on Canelo rehydrating for the fight and he’d have to accept the fight taking place in Texas with the same open scoring that did Trout in.
Facing Canelo and beating him is really the only way Broner is going to become a star attraction like Mayweather did after he beat Oscar De La Hoya. It’s still a little early for the Canelo fight, but I’d say by next year, Broner needs to be looking to make that fight happen because if he doesn’t then he’s likely going to have to be satisfied with being a non-PPV fighter.
If Golden Boy tries to ask boxing fans to pay to see Broner’s fights, I see those PPVs doing poorly, like in the 100,000 range, if that. It’s still too early and he doesn’t have a major win on his resume yet. Canelo needs to become more popular before Broner fights him because if he takes him on now and beats him, it won’t make Broner a huge PPV star because Canelo isn’t a crossover star yet in the U.S.
Canelo doesn’t have any major wins on his resume and his best win of his career over Trout is kind of tainted given the fact that he was out-landed and out-worked by Trout and the scoring was so bizarre that it just made the victory look less legit. The open scoring really hurt Canelo because it showed a different picture from what fight fans saw with the judges giving Canelo almost every round of a fight he appeared to be losing after the 4th and 8th rounds.
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