Broner vs. Granados on Feb.18 at Cintas Center in Cincinnati, Ohio

By Boxing News - 01/09/2017 - Comments

Image: Broner vs. Granados on Feb.18 at Cintas Center in Cincinnati, Ohio

By Jeff Aranow: Adrien Broner (32-2, 24 KOs) will be fighting Adrian Granados (18-4-2, 12 KOs) on February 18 on Showtime Boxing from the Cintas Center at Xavier University in Cincinnati. Broner fights for the first time since his 9th round TKO win over Ashley Thephane last April.

Broner has had legal problems as of late. Those problems appear to be past him now. Hopefully, Broner doesn’t get in anymore trouble, because he has a lot of lost time to make up for.

Granados had a big win over Amir Imam in 2015, but he hasn’t done anything since that victory unfortunately. Granados only fought once in 2016. He’ll be coming into the ring with Broner in February having been out of the ring for a long time. It’s the same with Broner.
It’s hard to believe that Broner was once considered to be the replacement for Floyd Mayweather Jr. as a pay-per-view fighter that could carry boxing on his back.

With losses to Marcos Maidana and Shawn Porter, it seems that Broner is not going to ever make the leap to becoming a PPV fighter, and much less the replacement for Mayweather. It’s possible that we could see Broner losing to Granados if he doesn’t bring his A-game with him on the night. Shawn Porter out-hustled Broner in beating him in 2015. Porter just put pressure on Broner all night long, and made sure that he fought hard when he was attempting to clinch him, which he did a lot of in their fight.

Broner, 27, is supposed to be taking a step up in class in his next fight against possibly WBA light welterweight champion Ricky Burns. That fight could take place later this year in Las Vegas, Nevada. The Broner-Burns fight was supposed to have happened six years ago when the two fighters fought at super featherweight. Burns chose to move up to lightweight without taking the fight with Broner. That would have been a good payday for Burns, and you can argue that it was a big mistake on his part in moving away from the fight rather than towards it. A lot of boxing fans wanted to see the fight at the time. Burns’ career went belly-up not long after. He’s recently reinvented himself at light welterweight with the help of his promoter Eddie Hearn and the World Boxing Association with their rankings of different fighters that Burns was capable of beating.

Also on the Broner-Granados fight card is WBC World featherweight champion Gary Russell Jr. (27-1, 16 Kos) defending his title against challenger Oscar Escandon (25-2, 17 KOs), WBA World welterweight champion David Vanesyan (22-1-1, 11 KOs) defending his title for the first time against former IBF/WBA light welterweight champion Lamont Peterson (34-3-1, 17 KOs), WBC junior middleweight champion Jermell Charlo (28-0, 13 KOs) facing challenger Charles Hatley (26-1-1, 18 KOs) and light heavyweight contender Marcus Browne (18-0, 13 KOs) facing former world title challenger Thomas Williams Jr. (20-2, 12 KOs). It’s a very good card for being on regular Showtime and not on PPV. If all the PPV fight cards were this good, boxing fans would be quite happy.

Charlo-Hatley should be a good fight. Jermell is the lighter puncher of the Charlo brothers, and not seen as the really talented one of the two brothers. However, Jermell has good boxing skills, and he can punch with some power when he sits down on his shots from time to time. Hatley has been stopped before, and it’s entirely impossible that Charlo could get him out of there if he goes on the attack early.