(Photo credit: Idris Erba/Mayweather Promotions) By Allan Fox: Tonight’s fight between welterweights Adrien Broner (30-1, 22 KOs) and Shawn Porter (25-1-1, 16 KOs) is expected to be a competitive one that many boxing fans see as a 50-50 affair that could go either way when they battle for supremacy at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, Nevada.
Not only is this an almost even fight in terms of the match-up, but both fighters will be getting almost the same amount of money in regards to their purses for the fight.
Broner will be making $1.35 million compared to $1 million for Porter. There are rumors floating around that the 25-year-old Broner is near broke. If this is true, the $1.35 million purse will sure help his finances. Broner will need to keep winning through if he wants to become the guy that will replace Floyd Mayweather Jr. in the future, and become the sports first $1 billion star.
Right now, Broner is a long ways from becoming a billionaire. Broner will need to prove that he can beat guys like Porter and look good doing so for him to make that leap to become a PPV attraction. Broner will also need to beat the top guys at 140 and 147 like Lucas Matthysse, Keith Thurman, Lamont Peterson, Amir Khan and Kell Brook.
“Shawn Porter is a really solid competitor,” Mayweather said to Yahoo Sports. It’s not an easy task for Adrien. He’s going to have to fight.”
Broner will need to stand and trade with Porter in the trenches for him to get the win tonight. If Broner just tries win off of copying Mayweather’s pot shot style of fighting, it’s probably not going to work against a fighter with a high punch output like the 27-year-old Porter. He’s capable of throwing 80 to 100 punches per round for an entire 12 round fight.
Broner throws about half that many punches with roughly the same power. It stands to reason that if Porter is able to throw far more punches than Broner with the same amount of power, it’s going to force Broner to try and match his output. If not, Broner will lose the fight just like he did against Marcos Maidana in 2013. Going into the fight, Maidana realized that Broner was only capable of throwing one or two punches at a time before stopping and surveying the damage. Maidana and his trainer came up with a great plan of throwing massive amounts of punches to force Broner into hiding behind his shoulder roll defense for 12 rounds.
Porter made the 144 pound catch-weight on Friday without any complaints. He said he felt strong after making the weight, and he then rehydrated up to 153lbs by the evening. We’re going to find out if the strain of getting down to 144 was hard on his body when he gets in the ring tonight. Porter normally comes in right at 147 for his fights at welterweight. But we don’t know how much work he put into getting his weight down.
You have to remember that up until yesterday, Porter thought he was going to have to make the 154lb rehydration limit today as part of the rehydration clause. However, the secondary weigh-in was thrown yesterday for some reason. There’s talk that Broner’s management decided to dump the 154lb limit because it would have potentially impacted Broner just as hard as Porter, and Broner looked as big as a house this week. It wouldn’t be surprising if Broner comes into the fight over 160lbs tonight. That would make it interesting if he is that big because he would have more size to compete with Porter. Broner could then stand his ground without getting run over like he did against Maidana.
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