Broner might be back at 140 for next fight, says trainer

By Boxing News - 12/24/2013 - Comments

broner6789By Allan Fox: Michael Stafford, the trainer for Adrien Broner (27-1, 22 KO’s), says that Broner might fight at light welterweight for his next fight in moving down in weight from the welterweight division following his crushing loss to Marcos Maidana this month. But Stafford says that Broner probably won’t be going back down to the lightweight division to fight. Broner still holds the WBC lightweight title, but it doesn’t look like he’s going to bother defending the belt.

Stafford says that Broner wants his next fight to be a pay-per-view fight, but that’s obviously going to be tough to do given his loss to Maidana. Also, there’s not too many PPV fights that take place at 140. If Broner goes to that weight, he may need to pull a welterweight down to fight him in order to ask boxing fans to pay to see him coming off of his one-sided loss to Maidana.

“A lot of people say they want him to fight 140, or 135,” Stafford said via RingTV. “He don’t have no problem making 140, but I don’t think that it will be at 135,” said Stafford. He wants to get on pay per view to show everybody that he had a bad first round…He’s good, and he’ll be back.”

The problem with Broner fighting at 140 is that there really isn’t a lot of opportunities for big fights at that weight. WBA/WBC light welterweight champion Danny Garcia plans on moving up in weight to 147 soon, Lucas Matthysse was exposed recently, and Ruslan Provodnikov is working with Top rank now. Broner probably can’t fight Provodnikov with him fighting Top rank guys, and a Matthysse fight isn’t going to be a big deal until Matthysse brings himself back by beating some quality opposition following his loss to Garcia.

It would be a mistake for Broner to try and push for his next fight to be a PPV fight. If that’s what his idea is then it could be a big disappointment for him and Golden Boy. I don’t think the boxing public would be interested in a Broner fight on PPV unless it’s him on an undercard. Even if Broner stayed at 147 and agreed to fight a rematch against Maidana, it would still difficult to ask boxing fans to pay to see a second fight between them. It’s just not a PPV type of a fight.

Broner needs to beat someone like Keith Thurman, Shawn Porter and definitely Maidana for him to regain the status that he lost in the Maidana fight. But with Stafford talking about Broner going down to 140, I don’t believe that any of those things are going to happen.



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