Will Adrien Broner speak during kickoff press conference on Tuesday?

By Boxing News - 09/01/2015 - Comments

broner4By Allan Fox: Former three division world champion Adrien “The Problem” Broner (30-2, 22 KOs) will be taking part in a kickoff press conference on Tuesday, September 1st to announce his fight against Khabib Allakhverdiev (19-1, 9 KOs) on October 3rd at the U.S. Bank Arena in Cincinnati, Ohio.

Broner, 25, recently said on his social media account on Twitter that he won’t be giving any interviews to the media or speaking during press conferences until after the fight is over. However, fighters are typical expected to take part in the press conferences to speak with the media and the boxing public who attend the conferences.

It’s going to be interesting to see if Broner chooses to keep his word by not speaking during tomorrow’s press conference at 3:00 p.m. at the U.S Bank Arena in Cincinnati, Ohio. If Broner chooses not to speak to the media during the press conference tomorrow and give interviews, he could be hurting himself. Fighters are expected to help sell their fights. When they don’t make an effort, they hurt themselves as well as their promoter and management.

As for why Broner isn’t talking to the media, it’s still not clear what brought that on. If I were to speculate about the reasons, I would guess that Broner has been slammed pretty hard by the boxing media since his 12 round unanimous decision loss to Shawn Porter last June.

Broner was beaten soundly, and he looked really poor in that fight. He held constantly and ran around the ring trying not to get hit by Porter. Broner averaged only 25 punches thrown per round, because of all the holding and moving he was doing. There was no way that the judges could give Broner the win with him not letting his hands go in the fight the way he needed to.

Broner will be really fouling himself up by choosing to stay mute during the run up to the fight. He’s not a big enough star for his fights to do incredibly well without him speaking to the media and giving interviews.

There are some fighters like IBO/IBF/WBA/WBO heavyweight champion Wladimir Klitschko who doesn’t do a lot of interviews with the media before his fights, but he’s been a champion for so long that it doesn’t negatively impact his fights for him to not to talk a lot. But for a non-champion like Broner, who has lost 2 out of his last 5 fights, it’s very important that he gives a lot of interviews and speaks during the press conferences so that he can drum up interest for his fight on October 3rd.

Broner’s fight against Allakhverdiev is seen as a crossroads fight for Broner. If he loses the fight, his career will be seen by many fans as pretty much over. Broner is already seen as a fighter who has shot his load and has now been exposed as a limited fighter who mainly picks up paper titles against weak opposition rather than against the best in the division.

The Broner vs. Allakhverdiev fight on October 3rd will be for the vacant WBA World super light welterweight title. This will be Broner’s chance to try and win his 4th division world title. It’ll also be his 4th time fighting for a world title against a weaker opponent. In Broner’s previous title wins at super featherweight, lightweight and welterweight, he’s not faced the very best fighters.

He’s beaten some decent competition like Antonio DeMarco and Paulie Malignaggi, but not one that you can really good a very good fighter. Broner was lucky not to have to fight Terence Crawford for the WBC lightweight title, Orlando Salido for the WBO super featherweight title or Keith Thurman for the IBF welterweight title.

Allakhverdiev, #5 WBA, will be leapfrogging over #1 WBA Jose Benavidez, #3 WBA Amir Iman and #4 WBA Michelle Di Rocco to get a shot at the WBA title against #2 WBA Broner. Some boxing fans would say that Amir Iman is a far better fighter than Allakhverdiev, and would stand a very good chance of beating Broner if given the chance, which he obviously isn’t being given. The World Boxing Association is doing Broner a huge favor by letting him fight Allakhverdiev for the vacant WBA Super World light welterweight title instead of Iman.



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