By Scott Gilfoid: WBO lightweight champion Ricky Burns really blew his big chance to land a unification fight against WBC lightweight champion Adrien Broner (26-0, 22 KO’s) when he had the opportunity to get that fight, because it’s now looking more and more like Broner will be facing WBA World welterweight champion Paulie Malignaggi (32-4, 7 KO’s) on June 22nd.
According to Fighthype, HBO wants the Broner vs. Malignaggi fight after having lost Floyd Mayweather Jr. to Showtime/CBS, and they need Broner at welterweight, not lightweight for him to get the big numbers that Mayweather was getting.
Basically, Broner is being put on an elevator to the top and the fight against Malignaggi is the button Broner will be pushing to get there. Broner will be moving up two divisions to take that fight, but it’s not as quite as tough as it would be if his first fight at welterweight were against someone like Tim Bradley, Manny Pacquiao or Devon Alexander.
Those would be difficult match-ups for Broner given the big weight increase of his opponents. Broner is going to be going from facing guys at in the mid-130s to fighting guys at 147, and some of them will be fighting in the 160s by the time he enters the ring against them.
Malignaggi isn’t one of those types of fighters that rehydrates way up in weight, but he’s still bigger than the guys that Broner’s been facing thus far in his career.
Malignaggi might not be a popular enough fighter to bring the Midas tough to Broner’s career the way that Oscar De La Hoya brought to both Mayweather Jr. and Manny Pacquiao’s career after he fought them. But Malignaggi is well known enough to give Broner a significant bump up in popularity after he faces and hopefully beats him for his sake.
Malignaggi is a good starting point for Broner at 147. From there, Broner will need a popular crossover fighter like Victor Ortiz to get him closer to the pay-per-view star status that Mayweather enjoyed with HBO.
It’ll be interesting to see if the Broner-Malignaggi fight can be made and if it’ll wind up as a PPV fight. I can see HBO choosing to make it PPV and putting together a four-part Broner/Malignaggi 24/7 to go along with it to get boxing fans interested.
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