Broner with great opportunity to impress on Mayweather undercard

By Boxing News - 12/29/2012 - Comments

broner5352By Scott Gilfoid: The talented WBO lightweight champion Adrien Broner (25-0, 21 KO’s) will be looking to build his star power on the Floyd Mayweather Jr. undercard on May 4th at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, Nevada. The 23-year-old Broner has already been winning many new converts lately with his impressive knockout wins over Jason Litzau, Vincente Martin Rodriguez, Eloy Perez, Vincente Escobedo, and Antonio DeMarco. Broner has knocked out his last five opponents and his last 15 of 16 opponents.

It’s been real impressive stuff from this young Mayweather-esque talent. However, Broner hasn’t been able to reach the huge numbers that he’d like to because his fights have been on regular HBO instead of PPV. Having Broner on the Mayweather card will mean millions of boxing fans will be tuning in to watch this fight due to Mayweather head-lining it, and the fans that don’t see it on PPV will catch it on the replay on regular HBO. This is Broner’s chance to really shine and win over a legion of loyal boxing fans.

Broner is hoping to get WBO lightweight champion Ricky Burns in the ring but that’s highly unlikely because the fighter from Scotland hasn’t been all that excited about getting in the ring with Broner for the past year. But there’s more out there in the lightweight/light welterweight divisions than just Burns.

If Golden Boy can’t get him, then they won’t lose anything by getting someone like Ray Beltran, Jorge Linares or Daniel Estrada. In fact, I think any of those fighters would attract more interest from the American boxing public than seeing Broner fight Burns, who doesn’t have a fan base in the U.S because he’s from Scotland. Burns is more of a Litzau-type fighter, and it wouldn’t be interesting for boxing fans to see him get blasted out in one round after getting caught on the ropes.

Broner needs a nice quick knockout to impress the fans and show that he’s the real deal. Broner wants to make the jump to being a PPV star next year, and a big win over a good opponent could make that possible. There are no real big names for Broner to fight unfortunately at lightweight. He’s going to have to move up to light welterweight and welterweight if he wants to get the big names and the big money. Beating up on Burns, Estrada, Beltran or Linares won’t do the trick for Broner. He needs big stars.



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