By Dan Ambrose: Tonight’s going to be a big fight for WBA 147 pound champion Keith Thurman (24-0, 21 KOs) and Adrien Broner (29-1, 22 KOs), because both of them have q lot of pressure on them to perform in their fights at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, Nevada.
Both fighters are expected to win, as they’ve been matched against fighters that are clearly below them in the talent department. However, if they lose or fail to impress, it’s going to be a major setback for the both of them, because their adviser Al Haymon is grooming them for bigger fights in the future.
Thurman will be fighting former two division world champion Robert Guerrero (32-2-1, 18 KOs), and Thurman is supposed to win this fight due to Guerrero not having much power or hand speed.
Haymon did a good job of picking out someone who doesn’t have the power to put a dent in Thurman’s questionable chin. We’ve already seen Thurman hurt from punches in his fights against Diego Chaves and Jesus Soto Karass. We also just saw Thurman run from 40-year-old Leonard Bundu for 12 rounds in his last fight in December of last year in Las Vegas. Thurman later said this after the Bundu fight:
“This is the sport of boxing, I pick how I want to fight. Only some of them are booing, the rest of them are cheering. Marcos Maidana I see you. Let’s go. Let’s get it.”
The fans were booing Thurman loudly during and after the fight. But the booing got far worse when Thurman made the above comment about “Only some of them are booing” when being interviewed by Showtime after the fight.
Broner will be fighting John Molina (27-5, 22 KOs) in a 12 round fight. While this fight has been advertised as being a great fight, it’s really not that a good fight unless you like seeing guys that are coming off of back to back defeats like Molina. He was beaten badly by 34-year-old Humberto Soto last September in losing by a lopsided 10 round decision.
While some boxing fans would say that there’s no shame in Molina losing by a wide margin to a fighter as talented as Soto, you have to wonder why Haymon decided to match Broner up against the loser of the Molina-Soto fight instead of the winner. It would seem like a no-brainer for Haymon to have put Broner in with Soto, given how easily he beat Molina.
It doesn’t make sense for Haymon to match Broner up against Molina rather than Soto, unless Haymon’s plan is simply to put Broner in a situation where he stands little chance of losing the fight. It’s no secret that Broner looked awful in his last fight against Emmanuel Taylor last September.
That was a very, very close fight where Broner could have lost had Taylor not gassed out in the last four rounds of the fight. As bad as Broner looked against Taylor, it’s not surprising that Haymon has matched him against Molina rather than Soto or Lucas Matthysse. Molina was stopped by Matthysse in the 11th round last year in April.
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