By Dan Ambrose: With only three days to go before his 144lb catch-weight fight against Shawn Porter (25-1-1, 16 KOs) on Saturday, Adrien Broner (30-1, 22 KOs) says he’s getting help from his mentor Floyd Mayweather Jr. (48-0, 26 KOs) to get ready for his at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, Nevada.
This is an especially important fight for the 25-year-old Broner because he needs a win over Porter for him to keep moving forward to his goal of becoming a PPV star in the future.
If Broner loses the fight, he can forget about being able to move to the pay-per-view area where Mayweather and other stars like Manny Pacquiao, Miguel Cotto and Saul “Canelo” Alvarez preside. Broner would have to remain just a regular fighter on normal cable.
“With Floyd Mayweather in there, he teaches me a lot,” Broner said via Skysports.com. “He’s teaching me. We talk all day and he comes to watch me train all the time. This is the first game that I’m going to do a lot of things. It might be the first time I stop Shawn Porter.”
Broner has already added a lot of the things that Mayweather does to his game a long time ago. The things that Mayweather is capable of doing in terms of ring movement, defense and hand speed aren’t things that Broner will ever be able to do as well as Mayweather because he’s lacks the mobility, speed and reflexes to do what he does. If Mayweather is advising Broner to use more movement against the bull-like Porter to get the better of him on Saturday, then those are instructions that Broner probably won’t be able to follow because Broner’s legs are too short and slow for him to move well. Broner isn’t as mobile as guys like Paulie Malignaggi, and we saw what Porter did to Malignaggi last year when he stopped him in the 4th round after battering him.
Broner can always use frequent clinching to try and slow down Porter on Saturday. That was Kell Brook’s main tool to beat Porter in their fight last year. Without frequently clinching 10+ times per round, Brook clearly would have lost to Porter, because he had no way of being able to handle his inside game and match him punch for punch on the inside.
If Broner chooses to hold a lot, he might have a chance of beating Porter. It obviously won’t make Broner look exciting to the fans who will be watching the fight, but it at least will give him a chance of winning unless the referee chooses to enforce the clinching rule.
With Porter having to boil down to 144 pounds for the catch-weight and then not come in over 154 on the same of the fight, due to the 10 pound rehydration limit, there’s a chance that Porter may be weakened enough for Broner to get the victory without even having to do anything special in the fight. The weight alone will do the job on Saturday rather than Broner having to up his game to a level that we’ve not seen from him before.
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