By Scott Gilfoid: WBA light welterweight champion Adrien “The Problem” Broner (31-2, 23 KOs) got passed over for the Manny Pacquiao fight for April 9th, and he’s understandably not happy about it. Broner felt that he should have been the one to fight the 37-year-old Pacquiao, because he wanted to beat him and send him into retirement. I would have liked to have seen Broner and Pacquiao fight. That sure as heck would have been a good one.
Broner wants to take out his frustrations on 35-year-old Ashley Theophane (39-6-1, 11 KOs), a little known fighter whose claim to fame is that he’s one of Floyd Mayweather Jr’s fighters in his Mayweather Promotions stable. Other than Theophane being with Mayweather, there’s nothing in Theophane’s career that stands out.
He’s just an aging fighter that loses to guys like Pablo Cesar Cano, Darren Hamilton, Danny Garcia, Ali Oubaali, Oscar Mikitas and Judex Meemea. Other than Cano and Garcia, those aren’t household names, and it kind of shows you how talented – or not so talented – Theophane is.
“I will just beat the **** out of Floyd Mayweather fighter Ashley Theophane in the beginning of March,” Broner said on his social media site.
I’m just wondering if the World Boxing Association will bless a fight between Broner and Theophane as a title fight. I mean, Theophane isn’t ranked in the top 15 by any of the sanctioning bodies, and the WBA might look a little silly if they sanction this fight as a world title fight for Broner unless they give Theophane a top 15 ranking on the jiffy. But what an awful fight though.
Does Broner REALLY need to do Mayweather a favor by fighting this Theophane guy or what? I can think of 20 better fighters in the 140lb division just on the top of my head without even looking at the top 15 rankings for the light welterweight division. I’m just saying. If it was my career, no way would I burn up a valuable fight facing someone like Theophane. Fighters only have so many fights in their careers, and it’s pointless to fight lesser guys when a fighter is in their primes like Broner clearly is.
It’s going to come down to Showtime Boxing and the WBA as to whether Broner will get to fight a soft touch like Theophane. If Showtime bows down and just lets Broner fight a horrible mismatch against Theophane, then it’ll be up to the WBA to be the watchdog for quality.
Ideally, the WBA should make sure their champions are at least fighting contenders when defending their titles. Once the sanctioning bodies let champions fight anyone they want, then it’ll lead to champions looking for the worst fodder they can find so that they can make sure they hold onto their titles for a long time.
Supposedly, the satellite distributers told Pacquiao’s promoter Bob Arum that WBO light welterweight champion Tim Bradley would be the best bet for Pacquiao in terms of money, but this hasn’t been verified. I don’t know if you can say for sure whether Bradley would be a better option for Pacquiao than Broner.
My guess is no, not for a third fight against Pacquiao. That’s just dumb. Pacquiao vs. Bradley 3 = fail. If the Pacquiao-Bradley 3 fight brings in horrible PPV numbers as many suspect it will, then Arum needs to start ignoring the satellite distributers when floating fight ideas by them.
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