By Allan Fox: Adrien Broner (26-0, 22 KO’s) believes that he’s the man that will be taking over for Floyd Mayweather Jr. when the 36-year-old Mayweather retires from boxing when finishing the remaining 5 fights on his 6-fight contract with Showtime/CBS.
Broner’s promoters have put him in position to take over for Mayweather by matching him against a number of fighters to inflate his resume with victories, and on Saturday night they’re matching him against the perceived weakest of the 147 lb. champions in Paulie Malignaggi (32-4, 7 KO’s) at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, New York.
They’ve set Broner up with the perfect opponent for him to shine against, just like they did in Broner’s last fight against Gavin Rees last February. The idea here is for Broner to look good, get a quick knockout, to be better seen as the next Mayweather.
However, Malignaggi could get in the way of Golden Boy’s and Broner’s plans by either beating him or causing him to look bad enough to where boxing fans suddenly have doubts about whether Broner can be the guy that takes over for Mayweather in the future.
To show you how much Golden Boy has hopes for being the next star, they’re paying him more for this fight than the champion Malignaggi is getting, according to Maxboxing.com. It’s not every day that you see a challenger making more money than the champion, and this hasn’t made Malignaggi happy about it.
Broner has a lot of pressure on his shoulders for this fight because it’s not a great champion or even a really good one that he’s facing in this fight.
Broner, if he’s really the guy that can take over the sport, he has to overwhelm Malignaggi and totally dominate him to show fans that he’s for real and not just a hype job.
Malignaggi was almost beaten by 23-year-old Pablo Cesar Cano in his last fight, and was knocked down by him in winning a narrow 11 round split decision.
Comments are closed.