Allakhverdiev: I will be victorious over Broner

By Boxing News - 09/30/2015 - Comments

Image: Allakhverdiev: I will be victorious over Broner(Photo credit: Stephanie Trapp/SHOWTIME) By Tim Fletcher: Former WBA light welterweight champion Khabib Allakhverdiev (19-1, 9 KOs) doesn’t expect to get caught up in Adrien Broner’s games this Saturday night when the two of the fight each other in the 26-year-old Broner’s hometown at the U.S. Bank Arena, in Cincinnati, Ohio.

Allakhverdiev, 32, thinks that Broner will be playing his usual games when he gets inside the ring with him on October 3rd on Showtime Championship Boxing, but he’s going to be ready for the fight with his own games to play that will offset the tricks that Broner is playing.

Broner and Allakhverdiev will be fighting for the vacant WBA World light welterweight title. This is kind of a controversial thing because both fighters are coming off of narrow defeats in their last fight, and it’s kind of a rare thing for a sanctioning body like the World Boxing Association to sanction a fight with two fighters coming off of losses.

It’s definitely common for the sanctioning bodies to allow one fighter to be coming off of a defeat when they fight for their titles, but not both of them.

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The fighters that are being ignored by the WBA is #1 Jose Benavidez and #3 Amir Iman. For some reason the WBA isn’t having at least one of those fighters fight for their WBA 140lb title. They picked out #2 WBA Broner and #4 WBA Allakhverdiev.

“I expect Broner to try to play his game, but we will play our game,” Allakhverdiev said. “The experience I gained after losing the title in my last fight [against Jesse Vargas] is that I really understand the opportunity that I am being given going into this fight,” Allakhverdiev said.

The southpaw Allakhverdiev isn’t that fast in terms of hand speed, and he doesn’t have huge punching power. In Allakhverdiev’s last fight against Jessie Vargas, he was beaten to the punch most of the night and hit a lot.

When Allakhverdiev did land, he didn’t have the power on his shots to do much to Vargas. Allakhverdiev wound up throwing a lot of punches, but he didn’t have anything on his shots to get the respect that he needed to for him to get the win.

Broner will have a huge advantage in hand speed and punching power over Allakhverdiev. I think this is a fight that could very similar to Broner’s mismatch against John Molina. I just wonder why the WBA didn’t pick out a better opponent for Broner to fight instead of Allakhverdiev.

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Amir Iman and Jose Benavidez are arguably much better fighters than Allakhverdiev. The WBA really did Broner a huge favor by letting him fight Allakhverdiev rather than Iman or Benavidez. I don’t know that Broner could beat Iman. I think he could beat Benavidez, but it would be a tough fight for him.

“I am not worried about fighting in Broner’s hometown. I have fought many fighters in their own cities and it doesn’t bother me,” Allakhverdiev said. “On Saturday night, I will show the fans a great fight and come out with the victory.”

For Allakhverdiev to have a chance of winning this fight then he’s going to need to attack Broner the same way that Shawn Porter did in beating him by a 12 round decision last June. I’m not sure that Allakhverdiev has it in him to attack Broner the same way that Porter did. He’s not as fast, powerful or as aggressive as Porter. Allakhverdiev is inferior to Porter in every facet of the game as far as I’m concerned, and I don’t see how he’s going to be able to attack Broner the way he’s going to need to be able to do in order to get the victory.

If Allakhverdiev just tries to box Broner, he’s going to end up getting slowly schooled from the outside due to Broner having the faster hands and better punching power. The only way that Allakhverdiev has a chance of winning the fight is if Broner runs out of gas and is unable to fight hard enough in the second half of the fight to get the win. I don’t think that’s going to happen though because Broner’s not show a tendency to get tired.



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