By Scott Gilfoid: If WBC lightweight champion Adrien Broner (25-0, 21 KO’s) wants to get out of his February 16th fight against British fighter Gavin Rees (37-1-1, 18 KO’s) in one piece so that he fight on the May 4th Floyd Mayweather Jr. undercard on HBO, Broner is going to have to be extra careful to avoid Rees’ head during the action.
I’ve seen many of Rees’ fights and he just comes storming forward with his head lowered like a Billy goat when he’s throwing shots. Rees reminds me a lot of heavyweight Evander Holyfield with the way he comes charging forward with his head lowered.
Two fights ago, Rees sliced up Anthony Mazzache with a head-butt that had him bleeding like a stuck pig. Eventually, Mazzache the fight was halted in the 7th because of the blood preventing him from seeing. Broner can’t afford to get cut up because it’ll ruin his possible fight on May 4th, which will be a much bigger deal than this fight because the entire nation will be watching the card with it being a Mayweather fight card.
Normally I would give Broner one or two rounds to knockout out the wide open Rees, but for this fight I think Broner needs to take his time so that he can avoid getting hit with the crown of Rees’ head in the early rounds. Rees doesn’t try to brain people with his head but it still happens because of his bad habit of coming forward with his head lowered.
Rees likes to rush forward like a ram and if you get in the way of him, he’s going to brain you with that head. I think Broner’s defense is more than good enough to get out of the way of Ree’s primitive looking shots, but trying to avoid getting tagged by his head will be a much different story for Broner.
It’s going to take expert skill for him to avoid getting smacked by Ree’s head. Broner needs to fight like a matador to avoid Ree’s little bull-like charges and tag him with check left hooks as he’s going on by much in the same way that Mayweather tagged Ricky Hatton when he was bum rushing him in their fight in 2007.
If Broner didn’t have an important fight date coming up on May 4th, I’d have no problem with him just standing his ground and taking whatever head-butts that he has to from Rees in order to knock him out in the 1st round, but it’s way too important that Broner not get cut so that he can fight on the Mayweather undercard.
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