Broner vs. Burns not what boxing fans want to see

By Boxing News - 11/23/2012 - Comments

Image: Broner vs. Burns not what boxing fans want to seeBy Scott Gilfoid: Golden Boy Promotions might want to take a long look at the poll over at RingTV where they ask who boxing fans want to WBC lightweight champion Adrien Broner to fight next. Instead of Ricky Burns, the fighter that Golden Boy is considering for Broner’s next fight, fans in large numbers prefer to see Broner fight Brandon Rios or Danny Garcia.

Obviously fans don’t really care that those two fighters are light welterweights and not lightweights. They’re smart enough to realize that 5 pounds isn’t enough to keep a big fight between Broner and one of them from happening.

Here’s the stats for the poll. Note how far down Amir Khan is in the poll. It would appear that his losses to Lamont Peterson and Danny Garcia has really hurt his popularity with fans because you would have to believe that he would be ranked a lot higher than this given that he’s arguably better known world wide than Rios, Garcia and Burns.

Brandon Rios 28.4%
Danny Garcia 24.2%
Ricky Burns 13.3%
Lucas Mattysse 11.9%
Juan Manuel Marquez 11.1%
Amir Khan 9.3%
Miguel Vazquez 1.8%

Golden Boy probably won’t pay attention to things such as polls when they look to put together Broner’s next fight. They’ll see the Burns fight as something that will increase Broner’s credibility by giving him another strap to go along with his WBC belt. However, they’d be much better off looking for the best possible fights for Broner rather than having him pick up paper titles left and right.

It’s better to have Broner fighting the biggest names rather than obscure belt holders. Golden Boy wants to turn Broner into a pay per view star along the same lines as Floyd Mayweather Jr. and Manny Pacquiao. But the way to do this isn’t by having Broner collect useless belts against unknown fighters. The best way to do this is to have Broner fight the big names like Rios, Garcia, and Lucas Matthysse. I think even Amir Khan would be a good scalp for Broner to add to his collection. That would be a much better name to add to his resume than Burns.



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