(Photo Credit: Premier Boxing Champions) By Dan Ambrose: With many fighters making their prediction on tonight’s welterweight fight between Adrien Broner (30-1, 22 KOs) and Shown Porter (25-1-1, 16 KOs), WBA welterweight champion Keith Thurman decided to make his own prediction on who he believed will have his hand raised at the end of the fight.
Thurman is picking Porter to come out victorious in this fight that will be televised on NBC at 8:30 p.m. ET/5:30 p.m. PT from the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, Nevada. Thurman thinks that Porter’s aggressiveness will be key to him getting the win over the 25-year-old Broner.
“I favor Porter in this fight. I think he’s going to bring high intensity and possibly outwork Broner for the victory,” Thurman said. Broner will have sharp defense to counter Porter’s high intensity. I think it’ll go the distance.”
That’s kind of how I see this fight going. It’ll match Porter’s high punch volume vs. Broner’s single pot shots. It’ll be kind of like how the Floyd Mayweather Jr. vs. Manny Pacquiao fight was supposed to have gone. The only difference is that Porter won’t be afraid to crowd Broner and stay on top of him for the full 12 round fight.
Pacquiao got scared off after taking some hard right hands in the first couple of rounds, and he failed the kind of pressure on Mayweather that he needed to in order to win. Porter isn’t afraid to put the pressure on Broner, and as far as we know, Porter isn’t coming into the fight with a torn rotator cuff like Pacquiao was.
Broner is going to have to do more than just focus on his Philly shell to keep him competitive in this fight against Porter. That shell defense that Broner uses only works against guys that stay on the outside and don’t crowd him to throw a lot of punches. Marcos Maidana showed how to defeat Broner’s shoulder roll defense, and Emmanuel Taylor came close to doing the same thing.
The Broner-Taylor fight was a really close one until Taylor got tired in the last four rounds and let Broner take over. If Porter’s stamina holds out for the full 12 rounds, Broner could be in deep, deep trouble tonight with the pressure that’s being put on him.
There’s little chance of a knockout in this fight. Broner has an excellent chin, and Porter takes a good shot too. If most of the fighting is going to be done on the inside, it means that neither of these guys are going to be able to get the power on their shots that they’ll need to in order to get a stoppage. There’s always a possibility of a cut stoppage, or a stoppage due to Porter landing a shot behind the head of Broner. But barring any of those things happening tonight, I think the fight will definitely go the full 12 round distance.
The winner of tonight’s fight could get a big fight in the near future. Mayweather has hinted that he might be interested in facing the winner of the fight, and it wouldn’t be at all surprising if that’s what happen. The last fighter that beat Broner, Maidana, was able to get a fight against Mayweather. Porter could lock himself in for a fight against Mayweather if he wins tonight.
Comments are closed.