Adrien Broner’s dream of being the replacement for Mayweather takes a hit

By Boxing News - 06/21/2015 - Comments

broner67By Allan Fox: Adrien Broner’s career suffered a huge setback last Saturday night with him losing a 12 round unanimous decision by the scores of 115-111, 118-108 and 114-112 to Shawn Porter (26-1-1, 16 KOs) in Las Vegas, Nevada.

The loss was a big enough one to derail Broner’s dreams of becoming the guy to step inside Floyd Mayweather Jr’s career when he walks away from the game in one or two more fights. Before his loss to Porter, Broner had said that Mayweather only had 36 more minutes of fight time before he replaces him as the top fighter in the sport. But the loss to Porter is definitely going to slow Broner’s progress in becoming the guy that takes over for Mayweather.

After the fight, Broner didn’t seem too concerned about the ramifications of his loss. To Broner, it wasn’t a big deal. He said “Great champions can take a good loss, just like they can take a good win. I will fight anybody. It don’t matter.”

Broner is going to need to put some wins together to get back to where he was before this loss. Coming into the fight with Porter, Broner had a three fight winning streak going and people were starting to forget about his loss to Marcos Maidana. It took two years to make fans forget about the defeat, and it might take another two years for Broner to make fans forget about his loss to Porter. But he’s going to need to stop losing to people because he really can’t afford any more losses if he wants to be the next huge pay-per-view star.

Broner took a lot of heat from fans for the holding he did in the Porter fight, as well as the constant movement. He looked like he wasn’t comfortable with the pressure that Porter was putting on him when he would get close to him on the inside. The reaction that Broner had was to hold Porter. It worked at times to nullify Porter’s offense, but it was too obvious and the fans reacted negatively to the holding by Broner. Referee Tony Weeks also took issue with Broner’s holding and eventually took a point off in the 11th round for the grabbing that he was doing.

Interestingly enough, Mayweather said afterwards that Porter should have had a point taken off for his holding as well. Mayweather thought Porter did as much holding as Broner did. I don’t think too many people will agree with that opinion, but that’s what Mayweather believed.

“I think there was clinching on both sides, but Tony Weeks, he’s the referee,” Mayweather said to Fighthype “He’s a veteran referee. He’s been around the sport a very long time. So I think if he wanted to deduct a point, he should have done it on both sides. It’s all about being on an even playing field. Tony Weeks I commend you. You did what you had to do.” Mayweather said.

With all the holding and other fouling Broner did, he was lucky not to have been docked more than just one point. In the 7th, Broner hit Porter while his back was turned to him. It was a real strange and dirty move that Broner did. Weeks let Broner get away with that foul despite it being flagrant.



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