By Sam Volz: Omar Figueroa Jr is furious that Adrien ‘The Problem’ Broner has pulled out of their scheduled fight this Saturday night on Showtime due to mental health issues.
Figueroa wants Broner to prove that he’s been seeing a mental health professional. That’s not likely to happen, unfortunately. Omar doesn’t like the fact that Broner chose to use mental health as his excuse for the pullout because he himself has been dealing with problems.
The 32-year-old Figueroa feels that Broner was “undisciplined” during training camp and isn’t ready for the fight. Broner looked haggard during their virtual press conference and was quick to end the first one abruptly.
Figueroa and the fans will need to take Broner at his word that he pulled out due to a legitimate mental health need and not because he hadn’t trained hard enough to get ready for what would have been a tough fight.
The former lightweight champion Figueroa (28-2-1, 19 KOs) says he expected Broner (34-4-1, 24 KOs) to pull out, which is why his management was able to quickly replace him with former 140-lb champion Sergey Lipinets for the main event on Saturday at the Seminole Hard Rock Hotel and Casino, in Hollywood, Florida.
Lipinets (16-2-1, 12 KOs) is arguably an improvement over the 33-year-old Broner, as he’s been fighting at a higher level in recent years. Although Lipinets is coming off a sixth-round knockout loss to Jaron ‘Boots’ Ennis last year, he looked good in his fights against Custio Clayton, Lamont Peterson, and Erick Bone.
With Rolando ‘Rolly’ Romero recently calling out Broner this week, you’ve got to wonder if his decision to pull out of the risky Figueroa fight was a move to ensure that he gets that fight. There’s arguably more money for Broner to make fighting Rolly than there is Figueroa.
It makes sense for Broner to pull out of the Figueroa fight if he wasn’t confident of winning. If AB has a chance for a bigger payday against Rolly, it would be a logical move on his part to bail on the Figueroa fight if he weren’t certain he would win.
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