Rees: Adrien Broner is a Mayweather wanna be

By Boxing News - 01/19/2013 - Comments

rees34By Scott Gilfoid: Former WBA light welterweight champion Gavin Rees (37-1-1, 18 KO’s) thinks WBC lightweight champion Adrien Broner (25-0, 21 KO’s) is a Floyd Mayweather Jr. clone and he doesn’t think he’s nearly as good as Mayweather Jr. Rees feels he’s going to beat Broner next month on February 16th and show this to the boxing world.

Rees told Sky Sports “He’s [Broner] a Mayweather wanna be. We’ll see if he’s the real deal on February 16th. I don’t think he is.”

Broner isn’t really like Mayweather at all other than his habit of fighting flat-footed and using the shoulder roll defense that Mayweather is famous for. Beyond that, Broner and Mayweather are completely different fighters. Broner doesn’t have Mayweather’s hand speed, he can’t move like Mayweather did in his youth, and he’s much more of a puncher than Mayweather.

Broner prefers to fight on the inside, whereas Mayweather likes to fight more on the outside. There are a few areas where they are clearly different from one another. Rees is just seeing superficial similarities and branding Broner without realizing that Broner is his own fighter. Sure, Broner has some parts of his game that looks like Mayweather but not enough for you to call him a “wanna be.’ Broner has simply taken a couple parts of Mayweather’s game and added it to his own style, and it’s working well for him.

Not too many fighters can do this because it’s difficult sometimes to use parts of other fighters’ styles successfully. We just saw that with former IBF/WBC welterweight champion Andre Berto, who looked terrible in trying to use the Mayweather shoulder roll in his loss to Robert Guerrero last November. It looked like Berto hadn’t really tested out the shoulder roll in sparring for the fight before trying it out on Guerrero.

It really doesn’t matter what Rees wants to call Broner. If he believes he’s a bad copy of Mayweather then so be it, but the fact of the matter he’s going to lose to Broner on February 16th and there’s not much he can do about it. Rees can criticize Broner’s style for anyone who wants to listen but at the end of the way, Rees is going to get knocked out in this fight and end up as just a statistic for Broner.



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