By Scott Gilfoid: As long as WBC lightweight champion Adrien Broner chooses to stubbornly stick it out in the lightweight division, he’s going to have very options for interesting fights after he obliterates his latest over-matched opponent Gavin Rees on Saturday night at the Boardwalk Hall in Atlantic City, New Jersey.
Broner knows that he doesn’t have anyone to fight at 135, yet he claims he’s still young at 23, and there’s no reason for him to be in any rush to move up.
Broner’s immediate options after the Rees fight is for him to face the winner of the March 16th fight between WBO lightweight champion Ricky Burns vs. IBF lightweight champion Miguel Vazquez. That’s not going to be an easy fight for Broner to make because Vazquez reportedly turned down a $300,000 offer to fight him, and Burns has rejected two attempts by Broner to face him.
If the fight with Burns is made, it’s likely going to take a huge offer to Burns from Golden Boy before he’ll accept. The thing is it’s not a big fight in the U.S, so it’s not really worth it for Golden Boy to give Burns a better offer than what they’re giving the over-matched Rees. If the only people who badly want to see that fight are from the UK, then what’s the point?
The most likely fight for Broner will be against the winner of the March 2nd bout between Richard Abril vs. Sharif Bogere fight. That’s a fight for the vacant WBA lightweight title. Broner vs. the winner of that fight won’t interest many boxing fans because Abril and Bogere are pretty much unknowns in the U.S. Broner will attract zero interest in facing one of them, but that’s pretty much all he has unless Golden Boy wants to overpay Burns or Vazquez, and that won’t be worth it either.
The best option for Broner would be a fight against Yuriorkis Gamboa. That would be a good fight, and it would attract a fair amount of casual boxing fans, even though Gamboa is still unknown too. It would be a fight where Broner would win respect from a lot of boxing fans if he were to beat Gamboa. However, it’s highly unlikely that fight will happen because of the difficulties that would be presented for Golden Boy in trying to negotiate a fight with Gamboa’s promoter 50 Cent.
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