Adrien Broner vs. Khabib Allakhverdiev in the works for October 3rd

By Boxing News - 08/08/2015 - Comments

broner11111By Dan Ambrose: A fight between former three division world champion Adrien Broner (30-2, 22 KOs) and former WBA 140lb champion Khabib Allakhverdiev (19-1, 9 KOs) is in the works for October 3rd, according to news from USA Today. The opponents for Broner’s October 3rd fight was initially down to Steven Upsher Chambers and the 24-year-old Allakhverdiev.

The Russian former World Boxing Association champion got the nod for the fight. Broner and Allakhverdiev will be fighting over the vacant WBA 140lb title.

It’s obviously not a great fight if you were hoping that Broner would fight someone well-known and talented like Lamont Peterson, Lucas Matthysse, Viktor Postol or Ruslan Provodnikov, but Broner is coming off of a loss to Shawn Porter in June of this year. It would be crazy to put Broner in with someone good enough to beat him again.

What is kind of disappointing about the Allakhverdiev being the guy that Broner will be facing is the fact that Allakhverdiev hasn’t fought in the last 16 months since losing a narrow 12 round unanimous decision loss to the Top Rank promoted Jessie Vargas last year in April of 2014.

Allakhverdiev hasn’t gotten near a ring since then. By the time he does fight in October, Allakhverdiev will have been out of action for 18 months. In other words, he won’t have fought in a year and a half. If you’re looking for a fair fight where one of the opponents has a decent chance of winning, you don’t select a guy who hasn’t fought in the last 18 months and stick him in with Broner to fight for a world title.

Allakhverdiev held the WBA “regular” light welterweight from 2012 to 2014, when he was beaten by Vargas. Allakhverdiev beat Joan Guzman to pick up the vacant WBA title in November of 2012. He then defended it successfully once in stopping Souleymane M’baye in the 11th round in their fight in July 2013. Allakhverdiev finally fought a halfway decent light welterweight in Vargas, he was beaten.

Broner is getting a lucky break here in getting a chance to pick up a light welterweight title the easy way by fighting Allakhverdiev, because if he had to fight Danny Garcia, Lamont Peterson, Postol, Terence Crawford or Lucas Matthysse, he likely would lose to all of them.
Broner’s defeat the hand of Shawn Porter last June was even worse than his loss to Marcos Maidana in 2013.

Broner was exposed badly in that fight as unable to handle Porter’s offense and pressure. Broner wound up clinching constantly, fouling and moving around the ring to try and negate Porter’s attacks. One of the fouls that Broner made was an unusual one where he punched Porter while he had his back turned towards him. It was totally unnecessary move by Broner, and he was fortunate not to have had a point taken away from that foul because it was blatant. Broner seemed to come unglued from the pressure that Porter was putting on him and the fouling seemed to be a product of that.

If Broner doesn’t increase his work rate in this fight from the 25 punches per round that he averaged against Porter, he could wind up losing to Allakhverdiev. The Russian fighter may be a flawed guy, but he’s capable of throwing more than 25 punches per round. As bad as Broner looked against Porter, it might have been a better idea for his adviser Al Haymon to have him take a couple of tune-up bouts to have Broner work on throwing more punches, because his low work rate has been a flaw in his game since he turned pro.

Broner’s opponents take advantage of his low punch output to outwork him. Fortunately for Broner, he’s been able to overpower many of the guys that he’s faced during his career so he doesn’t have more losses on his resume. But now that he’s fighting in the 140lb division, Broner can’t overpower guys like he was able to do when he fought at super featherweight and lightweight.

Broner needs to be able to throw a lot of shots if he wants to beat the best fighters at 140. If Broner can’t do that against Allakhverdiev, I wouldn’t be surprised if he loses this fight too. Broner barely beat the light hitting Paulie Malignaggi not long ago in their fight in 2013. If Malignaggi was able to almost beat Broner, then Allakhverdiev might have enough talent to do the job on him if he can average over 50 punches thrown per round. That would be double Broner’s work rate and likely enough to get a 12 round decision win.



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