By John Kelvin: On February 16th Lightweight title holder Adrien Broner takes on former 140lb champion Gavin Rees in Atlantic City. This fight was made because both Broner and fellow lightweight champion Ricky Burns were unable to agree terms for a proposed unification.
Broner won the title from Antonio Demarco in a excellent display of boxing in his first fight at lightweight after previously holding a belt at super featherweight. Rees is a former 140lb champion who won the title in an upset victory over Souleymane M’baye in 2007 but lost it in his first defense against Andriy Kotelnyk.
Since those two fights Rees has not competed on the world level and has mainly faced British and European opposition whereas Broner has been consistently fighting in title fights for the last year. Rees is a good but not great fighter who relies on pressure to break his opponents down while Broner is more of a pure boxer.
Will Rees be able to throw Broner off his game plan with constant pressure and slowly break him down? Broner has yet to be fully tested and anything can happen in the ring but I doubt that what Rees brings will be enough to make him victorious in the fight.
Broner’s fast hands, power and overall better boxing skills should be able to force a stoppage by around the fifth or sixth round. This will allow him to move on and try to unify the division against the winner of Ricky Burns and Miguel Vasquez in what should be an excellent fight for lightweight supremacy.
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