Molina to force Adrien Broner to brawl

By Boxing News - 04/28/2014 - Comments

broner52By Allan Fox: Carlos Molina (17-1-1, 7 KO’s) is being brought in as the sacrificial lamb for former three division world champion Adrien Broner (27-1, 22 KO’s) to slaughter this Saturday night in their 10 round bout on the undercard of Floyd Mayweather Jr’s fight against Marcos Maidana at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, Nevada. Molina has nothing to lose in this fight, and so he’s going to after Broner immediately to force him into a toe-to-toe battle in the same way that Maidana did with him last December.

The main difference between Molina and Maidana is power. Molina can’t punch, and he’s going to have to use the Paulie Malignaggi approach to beating Broner by throwing a lot of punches in an effort to outwork Broner. Malignaggi was successful with that approach, although he was arguably robbed by the judges.

“We’re going to go in there and give him a war, Molina said. “I’ve watched a lot of fights of his. The main thing is to let our hands fly, and it’ll be a fun fight. After I beat Adrien Broner, it’ll even more exciting to be on the undercards of Mayweather.”

A win for Molina would be a back breaker to the 24-year-old Broner’s career. It would be hard to see him coming back from a loss to Molina, because he’s essentially a pumped up lightweight like him, so it’s not as if Broner could move back down to the lightweight division and pick things up again to dominate like before. Broner is moving down to light welterweight for this fight, but a loss to Molina would be a signal that Broner isn’t even safe at light welterweight.

After watching John Molina and Lucas Matthysse slug it out last Saturday night at the at the StubHub in Carson, California, it’s difficult to picture Broner being able to hang with either of those fighters. Broner doesn’t have the major power or the work rate that fighters like Matthysse have, and even Molina would be a big problem for him.

In recent workout video of Broner, he appears to be focusing on using movement for the first time in his career. He doesn’t look good moving around at all. Broner’s short legs seem to be too thin to carry around his huge upper body, and that’s perhaps why he’s not used a lot of lateral movement in any of his previous fights. He’s got a wrestler’s body with short legs and a huge torso. There’s nothing that Broner can do to change that, but he’s going to need to develop some kind of movement if he wants to be able to compete against the best fighters in the 140lb division.



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