Adrien Broner challenges Danny Garcia to a September fight

By Boxing News - 04/12/2015 - Comments

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By Dan Ambrose: Former three division world champion Adrien Broner (30-1, 22 KOs) must smell blood in the water after witnessing last night’s catch-weight fight between WBA/WBC light welterweight champion Danny Garcia (30-0, 17 KOs) and IBF 140 pound champion Lamont Peterson (33-3-1, 17 KOs) on the Premier Boxing Champions on NBC. Broner is now challenging the 27-year-old Garcia for a fight in September if he’s game.

Broner must realize that Garcia is there for the taking because he was never eager to get inside the ring with the Philadelphia native before the Peterson fight.

Broner, 25, has a fight against a still to be determined opponent two months from now on June 20th in Cincinnati, Ohio, USA. Once that fight is out of the way, Broner will be free to take on Garcia in September if that’s a fight that their mutual adviser Al Haymon wants to put together. It would be a great fight for the Premier Boxing Champions, and it would help weed out the light welterweight division. Garcia would likely ask for the fight to take place at another catch-weight in the welterweight division. However, even if Garcia wanted the Broner fight to take place at the full weight for the welterweight division at 147, I believe Broner would be up for it. He obviously isn’t afraid of Garcia after watching him get walked own by Lamont Peterson in the last six rounds of the fight last night.

”Great fight Garcia and Lamont. I’m happy nobody got severely hurt I got love for both fighters but Lamont is closer to me so I was going for him,” Broner said on his Instagram on his social media site. ”Now I got all that out the way this is my message to my friend my homie Danny Garcia heal up well and get back in the gym and fight me in September in Vegas at the MGM GRAND. Let’s get this money and go to rehab together on Sunday.”

Broner is good at walking down his opponents the way that Peterson did. You’d have to consider Broner as having an excellent chance of beating Garcia if he followed the blue print from Peterson. All he’d have to do is keep coming forward and throwing punch after punch. Broner doesn’t tend to throw a lot of shots at times though, and he takes a lot of rest break where he backs up to the ropes. Obviously this isn’t something that would work against a fighter like Garcia because he’d take advantage of those lulls to get the better of Broner. But if Broner could stay busy the entire fight and keep walking Garcia down, I think he would have an excellent chance of beating him.

Broner has fast hands, and he seems to be a bigger puncher now than he was in the past. Garcia isn’t the fastest puncher, as we saw last night. There’s a good chance that Broner would make Garcia miss with his head shots. The punches to the body would likely land against Broner, but Garcia would be leaving himself open to getting countered if he threw too many body shots.

Before last night, I believe of boxing fans would pick Garcia to defeat Broner, but not anymore. I think Broner would have to be seen as the favorite against Garcia right now.

Broner vs. Garcia still wouldn’t be a big enough fight for it to be considered a pay-per-view bout, but it’s one that would likely bring in huge ratings on Premier Boxing Champions (PBC) on NBC. The fight would be huge if they advertised it correctly.

Garcia defeated Peterson by a 12 round majority decision by the scores 114-114, 115-113 and 115-113 last night. It doesn’t take a genius to see that Peterson would have won the fight had he come out of the gate fighting aggressively from the start of the fight. Peterson’s inside fighting was way too good for Garcia, who looked uncomfortable each time Peterson would get in close. Like in his fight with Lucas Matthysse in 2013, Garcia tried to tie Peterson up each time he came inside on him. But Peterson was having none of it, as he fought his way out of the clinch and/or kept throwing punches with whatever free hand he had while being held by Garcia. That’s the way good fighters are taught to deal with a clincher. You’re supposed to keep fighting through the clinch. Matthyse didn’t do that against Garcia. He just let Garcia tie him up and then he’d wait for the referee to break them. Peterson didn’t play that. He just kept fighting even with Garcia holding on as tightly as he could. Garcia through a lot of blows last night, and the referee did little more than warn Garcia over and over again. To Peterson’s credit, he didn’t get into a low blow war with Garcia to pay him back each time he was hit low. Some of the low blows from Garcia were in the thigh area, which showed how far down he was going when landing his low shots. Why the referee didn’t take points off from Garcia is anyone’s guess. Had the referee done his job in taking off points, Peterson would have won the fight. There were clearly more than three warnings from the referee to Garcia for the low blows. That should have resulted in points being taken off from Garcia.

There might be more interest in a Garcia vs. Peterson rematch than there would be in a Broner vs. Garcia fight. However, Garcia doesn’t seem to like giving rematches even when his fights are exciting or controversial. Garcia never gave Matthysse or Mauricio Herrera rematches despite there being a lot of interest from fans in seeing Garcia fight those guys again. It stands to reason that if Garcia was comfortable walking away with a questionable win over Mauricio Herrera, then it’s likely that Garcia won’t bother fighting Peterson a second time. By not facing Herrera and Peterson again, Garcia is unwittingly eroding his own popularity with boxing fans because he’s moving on without showing that he’s better than these fighters. When you do that you end up losing fans.



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