By Danni Rocket: Continuing on with my series of articles about boxers who have not reached their full potential, my latest post will be about Adrien “The Problem” Broner.
As a man who was initially touted to be the replacement for Floyd Mayweather Jr, it is fair to say that Adrien Broner has not lived up to expectations. His achievements seem impressive (a 4 weight world champion at the aged of just 26), and up until his move to Welterweight it looked as though he had the talent to fill his mentors’ shoes. However, on closer scrutiny of his boxing record it becomes clear that most of his titles came against weak opposition, and he seems to struggle when stepping up in class. In this article, I am going to breakdown his career from his first major fight at Super Featherweight against Daniel Ponce de León, through to his recent outing against Mikey Garcia.
Super Featherweight
Although Adrien Broner had already had 20 fights by this point in his career, amassing a record of 19 wins with 1 no contest (for pushing a boxer out of the ring in his 6th fight), and even earned himself some minor titles, none of these fights were against anything other than highly limited or unknown fighters. As a result, I will be passing over these fights for the more important contests of his more recent career.
Broner fought the former champion Daniel Ponce de León in March 2011, winning by what some consider a controversial Unanimous Decision. Television pundits on both sides of the Atlantic gave the fight to Ponce de León for being the busier fighter. I scored the fight in favour of Broner due to the fact that I felt he controlled the pace of the middle rounds, and was more efficient with his punches. It is impossible however to argue that Broner didn’t have it easy against the Mexican fighter. It should be mentioned also that Ponce de León was moving up for the first time to Super Featherweight, and that despite being a former world champion, the only notable victories on his record to this point were Orlando Cruz, Cornelius Lock and a 35-year-old Gerry Peñalosa.
From this fight Broner fought once more before fighting for the vacant WBO Super Featherweight Title against Vicente Martín Rodríguez. Now at the risk of tooting my own horn, I like to think I know a bit about boxing, and I’ve never heard of a single name on this fighters’ resume. Predictably, AB won by 3rd round knockout, and rounded of 2011 as world champion. He defended his WBO belt once against the undefeated (but little known) Eloy Perez, beating him by 4th round TKO, before being stripped of his title on the scales against Vicente Escobedo for coming in at over 133 pounds for their scheduled 130 pound fight. Broner defeated the limited American by 5th round TKO and moved up to Lightweight.
Lightweight
Broner met the WBC Champion Antonio DeMarco in the squared circle on the 17th of November 2012. DeMarco was a good fighter, whose only notable lose was against the great, but seriously troubled, knockout artist Edwin Valero. In my opinion, this was The Problems greatest victory. He controlled the fight from the outside, and when the exchanges moved in closer, he was clearly getting the better of the inside game also. By the 8th round DeMarco’s face was a mess, and it was clearly a broken man that Broner put down hard from an uppercut, forcing the Mexicans corner the throw in the towel.
Broner, now a two weight world champion faced Welshman Gavin Rees in February 2013, and despite taking some shots, was never in danger at any point of the fight. Broner stopped the highly ranked contender in the 5th round, and began to give people reason to believe his insistence that he was the Mayweather replacement.
Welterweight
The ever confident Broner arranged to fight Brooklyn native, and 2 division world champion, Paulie Malignaggi on 22nd of June 2013, moving up 2 divisions in just 4 months. Broner had been struggling with the Lightweight limit, however I feel this jump up was too much too quick. He defeated Paulie Malignaggi by a Split Decision in a tougher than expected fight, earning him the WBA strap and making him a 3 weight world champion at 23.
December 2014 was to become a turning point in the young Americans career, for reasons I will discuss later. He was defeated by the Argentine power puncher Marcos Maidana, getting dropped twice in a fairly one sided fight, with the possible exceptions of round 4 though 7. Broner was clearly upset after the fight, and it appeared his famed confidence had been seriously rocked. After the fight, Broner’s team said he would be moving down to Light Welterweight.
Light Welterweight
Although Broner has made two returns to Welterweight, I will be including those fights in this section, as he remained a light welterweight fighter throughout this period of his career.
In May 2014 Broner fought to a 10 round Unanimous Decision against the same Carlos Molina that Amir Khan had stopped 18 months previous, claiming a regional WBA title in the process. The Cincinnati native then met Emmanuel Taylor in what should have been an easy fight. Taylor however battled hard, and although many of his punches were ineffective, he clearly claimed the majority of the early and middle rounds. Broner managed to knockdown his opponent in the 12th round, and thus securing a far closer than expected UD.
After this Broner then fought a bizarre fight against John Molina Jr, in which the latter hardly threw a punch. It is possible that Molina should have had time off following wars against Humberto Soto and Lucas Matthysse, rather than taking the Broner fight. However, a pay check like the one earned against Broner is hard to refuse, and Broner easily won the fight via another Unanimous Decision.
He then made an ill-advised fight against former IBF Welterweight champ “Showtime” Shawn Porter at a catchweight of 143 pounds. Throughout the fight, Broner seemed either unable or unwilling to let his hands go. One of the few power punches thrown by AB dropped Porter in the 12th round, however it was a case of too little, too late. The judges scored the fight relatively close, though most observing the action struggled to give Broner more than 2 or 3 rounds.
After losing to Porter, Broner managed to secure a fight for the WBA Light Welterweight Title against the seriously limited Russian, Khabib Allakhverdiev. The American managed to stop the light hitting champion in the 12th round, and therefore making him a 4 weight world champion.
Again, Broner’s title was stripped on the scales in his April 1st fight against Brit Ashley Theophane. After failing the make the 140 pound limit, Broner easily dominated his opponent, stopping him in the 9th round. After the fight Broner took almost 11 months out before his next fight against Adrien Granados, which was supposed to be contested at 142 pounds. However, citing an illness, Broner and his team changed the catchweight just days before the fight to the full Welterweight limit of 147 pounds. In a somewhat controversial decision, Broner was handed the SD victory, despite Granados being the far more active fighter, and only landing slightly fewer shots.
Broner and his team arranged his biggest fight for years against 3 weight world champion Mikey Garcia for July 29th 2017. After much concern about Broner making weight, he easily weighed in well over a pound under the 140 pound limit, claiming it had been his hardest and best training camp for many years. However, much like the Porter fight, Broner seemed reluctant to let his hands go, despite clearly losing the vast majority of the fight. The cornermen for Broner could be heard begging him to throw some shots, but to no avail. He lost a Unanimous Decision that seemed far wider than the judges’ scorecards would have one believe.
Conclusion
So why is this clearly very talented fighter not now considered the pound for pound fighter he predicted? I put this down to 3 main factors:
- He has faced far too weak opposition for far too much of his career. He clearly had the ability to dominate DeMarco early on in his career, and yet since then he has face 3 fighters I would consider top tier in 11 fights… and lost to all of them (Maidana, Porter and Garcia). He should have been fighting more fighters like Malignaggi, rather than wasting time against the likes of Ashley Theophane.
- He allows his weight to fluctuate far too much, and would appear, though admittedly I cannot say for sure, to not take his training seriously enough.
- Since the Maidana fight it would seem that he isn’t willing to take hard shots anymore. Against Porter, Granados and Garcia he appeared to be losing the fight, and yet would not risk throwing more hard shots, lest he received one back.
So how does he get back on top and achieve even more than he has already? I think he is already well on his way.
The Garcia fight, although a loss did seem a suitably big occasion for him to train hard for the full length of his camp. Providing he continues to train like this, and as he has stated, continues to takes boxing seriously, then he should have no problem upping the quality of his opponents slowly over the next 2-3 fights to bring himself back up to the top tier of his division. Unfortunately the Light Welterweight division is currently ruled by Terrance Crawford, who I don’t give Broner, or most boxers, much chance against. However, should Crawford move up to Welterweight as most expect, that would leave all the major titles available, and I certainly think AB has the talent to win many more belts at the 140 pound limit.
The last problem is not so easily fixed. As I discussed in my last article, Victor Ortiz suffers from a similar problem of seemingly not being interested in taking punishment anymore. I would say that the only way around this issue is intelligent match making. There are few active fighters that carry power like Maidana and Garcia, and providing this small percentage of boxers are avoided, further titles and riches must be in the future for Adrien “The Problem” Broner.
What does the reader think about ABs career? And who would you like to see him fight in the coming years? As always I look forward to reading your comments.