By Scott Gilfoid: British promoter Eddie Hearn realized early on last Saturday night that his boy Gavin Rees (37-2-1, 18 KO’s) was in a hopeless situation in his unwinnable fight against WBC lightweight champion Adrien Broner (26-0, 22 KO’s).
Hearn saw that Broner was just going to be too strong, too talent, and too fast for his fighter Rees, and he was happy when Rees’ trainer Gary Lockett made the decision to have the fight stopped in the 5th round shortly after Rees had been dropped by a vicious left hand body shot by Broner.
Lockett could have kept Rees out there, but the way that Broner was dominating him there really wasn’t any point in leaving him out any longer.
Hearn said to I Film London “I was surprised at how good he was. You hope he’s not as good as people make him out to be, but unfortunately he is. Gavin gave it everything, he started out brilliantly. He did everything he was supposed to do, but when he did those things, he [Broner] got success. It’s different when you get in with him. He’s a huge lightweight [Note: actually, Broner and Gavin both scaled in at 150 lbs. the night of the fight] as well, far bigger [Note: Broner is only three inches taller than Rees] man…He didn’t want to quit. I think the timing was right. You could see he wasn’t going to win the fight by that stage. Someone like [trainer] Gary Lockett is so important. Gavin has 2 or 3 years left in his career. You don’t let a fighter get damaged in a fight like that…Gavin’s performance last night was fringe world class, something like that. Broner’s just sheer class, and there was nothing he could have done to beat him. He was just too, too good.”
Hearn had been saying before the fight that Rees had a good chance of winning, and if he wouldn’t win, he’d impress a lot of boxing fans including HBO. I think it’s safe to say that Rees failed in both of those goals, as he clearly got beat by Broner, and he far from impressive once Broner stopped toying with him.
In the first two rounds, Broner did very little as he sized Rees up, and just fought at what looked to be half speed. But in the 2nd round, Rees hit Broner with a cheap shot left hook when it appeared that the action had died when the two were close together.
Broner looked like he was expecting the referee to break them, and Rees took the opportunity to tag Broner with a hard left hand to the head. It didn’t hurt Broner, but you could see that it embarrassed him because he came out in the 3rd round looking like a completely different fighter as he went after Rees, hitting him hard with left hooks each time he’d try to get in close to land his power shots.
After a while, Rees looked scared to come at Broner because of how hard he was getting hit with his quick left hooks.