By Chris Williams: Floyd Mayweather Jr’s uncle Jeff M. sees May 3rd fight between Floyd Jr. and WBA welterweight champion Marcos Maidana (35-3, 31 KO’s) giving fight fans a good opportunity to see the real difference between Floyd Jr. and Adrien Broner, the fighter that copies his fighting style but with less talent. Broner was beaten up in his last fight against Marcos Maidana in losing a 12 round decision last December.
Broner lost his WBA welterweight title in that fight, and he was totally ineffective at slowing down Maidana’s high octane offense using the Mayweather shoulder roll. Broner seemingly tried every trick in the book that he’d learned from watching Mayweather Jr., but none of the tricks worked against Maidana. He walked right through Broner’s shots, and knocked him down twice en route to winning a 12 round decision.
“This is where people are gonna see how Floyd fights as opposed to a guy imitating him,” Jeff Mayweather said to Fighthype. “Floyd is the genuine article and he is gonna show the whole world that the comparison is basically just that; it’s just a comparison. When you put the two against a common opponent and you get the chance to see the talent between the two, it’s not even really close.”
As good as Broner is, he’s not shown the ability to fully copy Mayweather’s fighting style. There’s a few things that are currently missing from his game that keeps him from being the next Mayweather, and that this point it’s doubtful that Broner will ever be as good as him.
Broner has all the elements of Mayweather’s fighting style well memorized, but what he lacks is the leg movement, the quick reflexes to get out of the way of shots, and the hand speed. Broner is like Mayweather in slow motion and without movement. He doesn’t move around the ring at all, and that’s a problem for him.
If Broner moves back down to the lightweight division where he was previously successful, he should be able to recapture the hand speed that he lost in moving up to the welterweight division. Broner can still become a huge start even in fighting at 135. He doesn’t need to be a welterweight in order for him to make it big in the sport.
Maidana is going to try and overwhelm Mayweather the same way that he did Broner, and it’s going to take Mayweather’s best game for him to get through this fight without ending up like Broner did. Maidana is a handful because of the pressure he puts on his opponents, and because of his big power. He’ll put the heat on Mayweather and keep him under duress for the entire 12 rounds.
You can expect Maidana to raise his game a couple of notches simply because he’s facing Mayweather. If Maidana can beat Mayweather, he’ll get tons of notoriety and he’ll get a guaranteed big money rematch. The money that Maidana makes in this fight would pale in comparison to what he could make for a second fight against Mayweather.
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