By Sam Volz: Adrien Broner sent former unified super bantamweight champion Stephen Fulton Jr a message of support today following his eighth round knockout loss to Naoya ‘Monster’ Inoue last Tuesday night at the Ariake Arena in Tokyo, Japan.
Adrien says Fulton showed that he has the “Heart of a Lion” and didn’t “lay down” against Inoue. Fans disagree.
They saw a very frightened fighter in Fulton, who wanted no part of mixing it up with Inoue and basically gave away his two titles.
Broner feels that the loss for Fulton isn’t the end of the road for the former unified 122-lb champion because he can return from this defeat.
It’s a bitter pill for Fulton to swallow, losing in the manner that he did against Inoue, but he can rebuild & eventually capture another world title once the Japanese star vacates the belts.
Fulton (21-1, 8 KOs) has taken heaps of criticism from the boxing world for fighting in what they felt was a timid manner, not giving it his all, and allowing Inoue (25-0, 22 KOs) to beat him up on the outside & even in close.
Fans wanted to see the 29-year-old Fulton fight courageously as 40-year-old Nonito Donaire had done in his two fights with Inoue.
It was frustrating for many people to watch Fulton not attack Inoue because he looked like he was afraid the entire fight and unwilling to go out on his shield if need be.
Broner defends Fulton
“I wasn’t going to say nothing, but I got to. I see a lot of [people] putting up bull s**t posts, saying, ‘He [Stephen Fulton] got his a** kicked. Stephen got his a** kicked,’ but these are the same people that have never put on a pair of boxing gloves in their life. They ain’t never jumped in that squared circle, bro, especially against a bad mother f***er, a world-class fighter,” said Adrien Broner on social media, reacting to Stephen Fulton Jr’s loss to Naoya Inoue last Saturday night.
Fulton needs to pick off some of these contenders at super bantamweight to bounce back from his loss:
– Murodjon Akhmadaliev
– Tomoki Kameda
– John Riel Casimero
– Luis Nery
– David Picasso
“Then these are the same people that had a street fight and got their a** kicked for free,” said Broner. “My [friend] went over there [Tokyo, Japan] chasing greatness and got paid great. It ain’t about money, but he got paid great, of course. But he was doing what he had to do, and this type of s**t happens in this game.”
Again, the boxing public was upset at Fulton for not fighting with more bravery because he looked 100% afraid of Inoue, and it was troubling to watch him get bullied the entire fight.
Obviously, money had something to do with Fulton agreeing to travel to Japan to fight Inoue because why else would he have put himself in the position of fighting in the challenger’s hometown?
“So, I want to say to Steph, keep your mother f***king head up,” said Broner. “Don’t let that s**t keep you down. Don’t let that s**t have you down at all, and I want to see you in Vegas this weekend [for the Errol Spence Jr vs. Terence Crawford fight at the T-Mobile Arena]. Come out, pop out.”
The good news is Fulton is young enough to bounce back from this defeat and eventually come back to win another world title at some stage in his career.
Unfortunately, he’ll probably need to wait until Inoue vacates his titles for him to have a good shot at becoming champion again. The way that Inoue effortlessly dominated him, it’s unrealistic to assume that the outcome would be any different in a rematch between Fulton and the Japanese star.
“There are [people] like me that still love you. I love you the same, I love you more. You got the heart of a lion. You didn’t lay down. [Some fighters] would have went over there [Tokyo] and laid down. You didn’t lay down. You tried to fight and kept fighting,” said Broner.
