By Jim Dower: Showing flashes of Floyd Mayweather Jr tonight, unbeaten super featherweight contender Adrien Broner (22-0, 18 KO’s) stopped Vincente Martin Rodriguez (34-3-1, 18 KO’s) in a 3rd round TKO on Saturday night to capture the vacant World Boxing Organization (WBO) super featherweight title at the U.S Bank Arena in Cincinnati, Ohio. Broner landed a beautiful uppercut and then added a big left hand that put Rodriguez out.
Broner hurt Rodriguez in the 1st round with a left hook to the head when Rodriguez made the mistake of walking straight in while trying to attack. That was start of a bad night for Rodriguez, because he just didn’t have the hand speed or the skills to really do much other than attacking in a primitive manner by throwing wild shots and missing most of the time. Broner appeared to be working hard to imitate the style of Mayweather, and it made him kind of stiff and mechanical. With Mayweather, he’s a lot more fluid because the style if natural for him because this is how he was taught as a child. But Broner looked like he was copying Mayweather and trying to hard early on.
The second round belonged to Rodriguez, as he stormed after Broner, throwing punch after punch and occasionally landing. Broner looked both amused and surprised at the attack from Rodriguez, but Broner stayed calm and didn’t lose his wits. He kept looking for one big counter shot to try and hurt Rodriguez with. However, Broner didn’t have many opportunities to land anything big because Rodriguez kept him covering up with his high work rate in the round. This was a clear round for Rodriguez.
In the 3rd, Rodriguez attempted to repeat what he had done in the last round by charging after Broner and throwing a lot of punches. But Rodriguez walked into a perfect right uppercut thrown by Broner that really hurt Rodriguez, sending him backwards in retreat. Broner tore into him, landing a flurry of shots until Rodriguez hit the deck after getting hit with a left hook to the head. The fight was stopped right then and there, because Rodriguez was in no condition to keep fighting.
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