By Duke Pahulu: Adrien Broner is supposedly being coveted as the next superstar in the sport of boxing. The kid has undeniable skills. Power, skill, and flashy persona is reminiscent of a follower of Floyd Mayweather Jr.
But I believe that HBO and his camp is doing Broner a diservice by feeding him tomato cans this far into his career. He already has a title but he’s hasn’t faced one guy in the top five in his division. The only solid opponents so far in his career are Daniel Ponce de Leon and Jason Litzau. I’ll give him credit for Litzau but Ponce de Leon gave the fighter all he can handle and many felt he was robbed of the decision.
My point is that HBO is allowing Broner to eat up tomato cans on coveted air time until they throw him in the sharks with the likes of Yuriorkis Gamboa or Orlando Salido. I know the junior lightweights is a weak division so there shouldn’t be any excuse for Broner to be facing the top guys. Fighters like Takashi Uchiyama, Juan Carlos Salgado and Roman Martinez would jump at the chance at fighting in the main event of an HBO card.
I know HBO is investing a lot of money on the kid but they are doing it the wrong way. This is one of the reason why the new crop of boxing talent have a hard time beating the old lions of the sport. They are not tested enough with top opposition leading up to their fist big fight. Fighters nowadays try to work boxing’s warped system to where they are willing to sit six to eight months at a time for a TV fight as opposed to fighting on local cards to hone their skills and build a following. Young stars-to-be look at Floyd and Manny and want to be that now. They don’t connect with the long road both fighters walked though to get to that spot.
The worst thing is that the powers to be allow this to happen. Promoters should be advising their fighters to fight as much as possible regardless of TV exposure and build them up the right way so he’ll be ready when the big fights come along. Don’t baby them to a big fight. A fight is only as good as its fighters. If only one of them has already proven his worth, that’s usually a recipe for a mismatch. And how many Saturday nights do you wanna waste on watching another one of those?
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