WBA promotes Adrien Broner to Super champion

By Boxing News - 11/06/2015 - Comments

Image: WBA promotes Adrien Broner to Super championBy Allan Fox: The World Boxing Association made the move to promote WBA light welterweight champion Adrien Broner (31-2, 23 KOs) to “super champion” in order to let WBA interim 140lb champion Jose Benavidez (23-0, 16 KOs) to fight for the WBA “regular” 140lb title in his fight next month against #3 WBA Michele Di Rocco (40-1-1, 18 KOs) on December 12th at the Civic Auditorium, in Glendale, California.

According to Fight News, Broner, 26, will then face the winner of the Benavidez vs. Di Rocco fight in 2016. Benavidez is promoted by the well-known Top Rank promotional company, and he recently won a highly controversial 12 round unanimous decision win over Mauricio Herrera a little less than a year ago in December 2014.

A lot of boxing fans thought that Herrera deserved the win over Benavidez. I thought that Herrera won by four rounds, and I was troubled by the scoring of the fight.

Broner will likely have an easy time beating the winner of the Benavidez vs. Di Rocco fight if it can be made. With Broner being managed by Al Haymon, you just never know if he would bother fighting Benavidez if he beats the 33-year-old Di Rocco, which would seem likely.

Di Rocco, who comes from Italy, has fought largely no one during his entire 11-year pro career. He was beaten by Giuseppe Lauri in 2007, but he’s managed to win the last 23 fights against very, very weak opposition.

Speaking of weak opposition, Broner recently defeated former WBA 140lb champion Khabib Allakhverdiev (19-2, 9 KOs) last month by a 12th knockout win to capture the WBA “regular” light welterweight title in Cincinnati, Ohio. Why the WBA picked out Allakhverdiev for Broner to fight for the vacant WBA title is unclear.

It would seem that they should have had Broner fight Benavidez or Amir Iman at the time because both guys were ranked higher than Allakhverdiev, and it would have been a fight that made a lot more sense for the WBA title.

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Broner was coming off of a loss to Shawn Porter at the time that he was allowed to fight for the WBA “regular” title; while Allakhverdiev was coming off of a loss to Jessie Vargas and a year-long layoff. I guess with the WBA having so many titles, it allows fighters coming off of defeats to fight for their titles rather than guys that winning their fights and looking good.

Broner should be able to hold onto his WBA title until he runs into Amir Iman. Once that fight takes place, it wouldn’t be surprising to see Broner lose again, because Iman is the real deal and can punch. He has better hand speed than Broner and he’s tall. We don’t know how good Iman is though, so it’s possible he could lose the fight.

Broner wants to take on the big names in boxing, but there really aren’t any big names for him to fight at 140. Viktor Postol, Benavidez and Terence Crawford are all with Top Rank, and I’m not sure that those fights will be made. Lucas Matthysse was recently beaten, so it’s not a great option for Broner to fight him.

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If Broner wants a big fight, he’ll either need to move up to welterweight to face the likes of Kell Brook, Porter or Danny Garcia, or he can move down in weight slightly to face one of the top lightweights like Jorge Linares or Terry Flanagan.



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