By Jason Kim: If you look at the way that WBC lightweight champion Adrien Broner fights with his identical fighting style to his hero Floyd Mayweather Jr. to his total domination of the mostly mediocre opposition at super featherweight and lightweight, it looks like Broner is being groomed by his promoters at Golden Boy Promotions to be the eventual replacement for the aging 35-year-old Mayweather.
Broner fights for Golden Boy, whereas Mayweather has a working relationship with the promotional company. But it would be huge for Golden Boy is they were able to turn the young 23-year-old Broner into a PPV star along the same lines as Mayweather because Broner would be an actual Golden Boy fighter and they would make tons of money in that kind of situation if Broner could keep winning for a decade.
Whether it’s Broner’s idea of Golden Boy’s, he doesn’t plan on moving up in weight to light welterweight or the welterweight divisions any time soon. Broner says he’s happy fighting at 135, and it’s pretty easy to see why. Broner can look good in front of boxing fans beating up guys with marginal talent with little chance of beating him.
It’s a smart move for Broner to squat in a division with little talent rather than a talent-loaded division because Broner can look unbeatable by staying in that division. Broner is having his fights televised by HBO across the United States to fans that have only a basic knowledge about the sport.
All they know when they see Broner is that he’d destroying one fighter after another. They don’t that the lightweight division is incredibly weak right now to where you have champions that some boxing fans feel are little more than paper champions.
However, it might not be possible for Broner to become a big enough attraction fighting in the lightweight division to where Golden Boy can suddenly start to ask boxing fans to pay $60 to see Broner fight. I think for that to happen, Broner will have to move up not one but two divisions to fight in the welterweight class against the better known fighters. Broner is going to have to make that move sooner or later because there aren’t any PPV stars in the lightweight division the last time I checked.
Broner has a fight coming up next month against Gavin Rees on February 16th on HBO from the Boardwalk Hall in Atlantic City, New Jersey. This is one of the typical mismatches that Broner has been matched up with, and it won’t tell us anything about him other than that he can beat guys that aren’t in his league in terms of talent.
Comments are closed.