By Dan Ambrose: Last Saturday’s fight between Adrien Broner (29-1, 22 KOs) and Emmanuel Taylor (18-3, 12 KOs) brought in a peak of 852,000 viewers with an average of 711,000 on Showtime, according to Steve Kim.
Those are respectable numbers obviously, and it shows you that the 25-year-old Broner remains a huge draw for Showtime. Those aren’t the type of numbers that suggest that Broner will be able to take the baton from superstar Floyd Mayweather Jr when he retires from the sport one of these days, but Broner at least will be fairly popular.
He’s not in the Saul “Canelo” Alvarez range either, and that’s probably going to stay that way for Broner unless he suddenly gets better in the near or two. Unfortunately, Broner looks like he’s peaked as a fighter. He was at his beat at super featherweight, and he’s looked nothing like what he was back then since moving up to the lightweight, welterweight and now light welterweight divisions.
Broner looked better against Taylor than he did in his fights against Carlos Molina, Paulie Malignaggi and Marcos Maidana, but he didn’t look that much better. Broner still looked deeply flawed as a fighter, and he struggled at times against a fighter that he should have easily beaten in Emmanuel Taylor.
You have to remember that Taylor is the same guy that Chris Algieri easily beat earlier this year by a 10 round decision. Algieri did a far better job in beating Taylor than Broner did, and Algieri isn’t even considered to be the best fighter in the 140 pound division. It stands to reason that if Broner had this much problems Emmanuel Taylor then it’s very likely that Broner would get exposed by the likes of Danny Garcia, Viktor Postol, Ruslan Provodnikov, Jessie Vargas, and Algieri. And with Terrence Crawford soon to be moving up in weight to 140, we could see Broner behind him as well.
Broner’s adviser Al Haymon might be able to keep him winning for a while if he continues to be careful in the guys that he matches him up against, but if Haymon slips up and puts Broner in with one of the aforementioned fighters above then we’ll likely see Broner taste defeat again.
Broner’s a good contender/paper champion type fighter in my view, but not someone that can actually win and hold down a title at 140 against the best fighters. He might get a hold of a belt once Garcia vacates, as long as he doesn’t have to fight Postol, but sooner or later, Broner will have to fight a good opponent and when that happens, he’s going to lose.
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