Broner is holding himself back intentionally, says Atlas

By Boxing News - 07/11/2015 - Comments

broner64By Allan Fox: ESPN analyst Teddy Atlas believes that former three division world champion Adrien Broner (30-2, 22 KOs) intentionally doesn’t fight as hard as he can because of a fear of failure if he did put out the effort 100 percent in each fight and still wound up losing.

By only giving partial effort, #2 WBA, #6 WBC Broner has people saying that if he only tried harder he would win every fight. Right now, Broner’s career isn’t looking so good after his 12 round unanimous decision loss to Shawn Porter on June 20th of last month at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Broner only fought hard in the 12th round in which he went after Porter and knocked him down. Broner still ended up losing the fight by a 12 round unanimous decision by the scores of 114-112, 118-108 and 115-111.

“I think there’s something deep inside that’s unsure of him and what he does is, he leaves open a side door; an escape route where people will say ‘ah if he loses it’s because he didn’t care enough, it’s because he wasn’t dedicated enough.’” Atlas said to Thaboxingvoice.com. “When really it’s because he’s too insecure to go out there and put it all on the line and find out how damn good he could really be.”

Broner’s problem appears to be more centered on him trying to imitate the fighting style of his mentor Floyd Mayweather Jr. rather than purposefully not putting out 100 percent effort every time he fights. Broner sees Mayweather hanging back on the ropes, using his shoulder roll defense, and landing single shots rather than throwing combinations.

Mayweather is able to do this because he’s a great counter puncher, and he’s superb hand speed and quick reflexes that enable him to avoid getting hit by his opponents. Broner doesn’t have the same reflexes, and he also doesn’t have the same hand speed. So when Broner hangs back looking to throw single shots, he winds up getting hit a lot and outworked occasionally when he steps it up against quality opposition that he’s unable to knockout.

If Broner doesn’t turn up the punch output in his offense, he’s going to lose a lot more fights in the future. He’s going to need to stop fighting like Mayweather and instead fighting more like Marcos Maidana if he wants to be successful in the future. Broner should be looking to pattern his fighting style after Maidana by throwing nonstop punches because that’s the only way he’s going to be able to beat guys like Shawn Porter, Lucas Matthysse, Viktor Postol, Lamont Peterson, Errol Spence, Kell Brook, Amir Khan and Keith Thurman.



Comments are closed.