Hittable Broner: A Quick Thought

By Michael Byrne - 12/14/2013 - Comments

broner222By Michael Byrne: WBA welterweight champion Adrien Broner (27-0, 22 KO’s) has dismissed Marcos Maidana’s power by claiming power is useless if you can’t land your punches, thereby claiming his speed and defensive capabilities will leave Maidana (34-3, 31 KO’s) missing all night in their fight tonight on Showtime at the Alamodome in San Antonio Texas.

Former WBA welterweight champion Paulie Malignaggi was able to find Broner all night with beautiful combinations last June, although Broner did take the sting off a lot of these shots with his gloves. And Malignaggi is a much faster, accurate puncher than Maidana.

What is worrying for Broner, however, is that in his fight against Gavin Rees at 135 last February, Rees was able to find Broner’s chin pretty easily for the first couple of rounds of their fight. Unfortunately for Rees, he was much smaller than Broner and wasn’t actually very good, so he was unable to capitalize on this. The point is though, if Rees could find Broner’s chin at 135, Maidana has every chance to do the same at 147.

The reason I keep mentioning weight classes is that, considering Broner was fighting at 129 only last year, he is definitely fighting above his weight at 147 right now, and Maidana will doubtless land at least a couple of big shots on him tonight.

Broner is bookies’ favorite, but win or lose we’re going to find out a lot more about him tonight. I don’t like Broner, but I’m not immature enough to discredit him. He struggled against Daniel Ponce De Leon in beating him by a 10 round decision in 2011, but Broner deserves applause for his 8th round TKO demolition of Antonio DeMarco in his first fight at lightweight last year in November 2012.