By Allan Fox: Alex Ariza, the strength and conditioning coach for former WBA light welterweight champion Marcos Maidana (34-3, 31 KO’s), thinks he could be in for a tough fight this Saturday night against WBA welterweight champion Adrien Broner (27-0, 22 KO’s) at the Alamodome, San Antonio, Texas, USA.
Like a lot of people, Ariza sees Broner as being an unknown as far whether he can stand up a busy puncher like Maidana. To be sure, Broner has proven that he can stand up to the best at super featherweight and lightweight, but his performance against Paulie Malignaggi last June left a lot to be desired.
Ariza said this about Broner via Philboxing.com “[He] is very good and this is a difficult fight. We have to have the fight approach. We don’t know if he is tough, but he’s come as far as he has, because he’s good.”
The toughness question for Broner will definitely be answered on Saturday. If he’s to beat Maidana, Broner will need to be able to stand in there and exchange with Maidana at many points in this fight. It’s doubtful that Broner will be able to overpower Maidana like he did against his opponents in the lighter divisions. Broner didn’t look particularly powerful against Malignaiggi, but then again that was against a defensive fighter who was using a lot of good head movement to keep from getting hit.
Maidana has shown a problem in taking body shots. That might be the one way that Broner can get Maidana out of there in this fight, as we saw Maidana in big trouble in his last fight against Josesito Lopez last June. Lopez had Maidana badly hurt with a big body shot in the 4th round. However, Maidana was able to recover from the shot and come back to punish and eventually stop Lopez.
If Maidana can stop Broner on Saturday, he’ll likely finish the dreams of Broner being the next Floyd Mayweather Jr.
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