Mosley: Mayweather was better than Broner at 23

By Boxing News - 04/03/2013 - Comments

mayweather5574567By Allan Fox: Shane Mosley feels that Floyd Mayweather Jr. was a better fighter at 23 compared to the Mayweather clone WBC lightweight champion Adrien Broner (26-0, 23 KO’s), who is now 23 and is constantly being compared to Mayweather due to his similar fighting style.

Mosley said to the boxingchannel.com “Both are good fighters. Floyd was tremendous at 23. He was very fast, very smart. He was born in a boxing family.”

There’s really no doubt about it that Mayweather was simply a far superior fighter at the same age as Broner. If you look at Mayweather’s fights Diego Corrales and Emanuel Augustus at 23, Mayweather scary good. He was so fast of hand and foot, and with much better hand and foot speed than Broner.

Mayweather’s jab was much better, his right hand landed a lot cleaner and his left hook was far superior to Broner. Every part of Mayweather’s game at 23 was superior to that of Broner’s right now. Mayweather could do everything at that age, whereas Broner is more limited given his inability to move around the ring and his slower hand speed.

Broner has to walk his opponents down and stay in the pocket with them because he can’t move like Mayweather used to. Broner is able to make up for his slower hand and foot speed by having good power, pinpoint accuracy and excellent defensive skills, but he’s still nowhere near as good as Mayweather was when he was at 23.

Mayweather was just far advanced at that age. Both guys hadn’t really fought a lot of great opponents at 23, and you can say they’re even at that category.

Broner is taking a step up in class on June 22nd in moving up in weight to face WBA welterweight champion Paulie Malignaggi in Brooklyn, New York. If Broner can win that fight and look good he’s going to be winning a lot of fans. The real interesting part is what comes afterwards for him.

Will Broner have enough self confidence to stay at 147 and defend his WBA title against Keith Thurman and some of the other bigger welterweights or will he vacate the title and move back down to lightweight to face the weaker opponents down there.



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