Broner vs. Malignaggi almost done, says Schaefer

By Boxing News - 03/10/2013 - Comments

malign1By Dan Ambrose: WBA World welterweight champion Paulie Malignaggi (32-4, 7 KO’s) will be facing WBC lightweight champion Adrien Broner (26-0, 22 KO’s) on June 22nd in a fight that will likely be televised by HBO rather than Showtime from the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, New York.

Golden Boy Promotions CEO Richard Schaefer told RingTV last night that the Broner-Malignaggi fight is “Basically done.”

Schaefer had been attempting to match Broner against WBO lightweight champion Ricky Burns in a unification bout, but Burns is still under contract with Frank Warren and is scheduled for a unification bout against Miguel Vazquez next.

Burns also turned down offers in the past to fight Broner, so Schaefer is moving on and won’t be bothering with trying to put that fight together any longer.

Broner is taking a lot of flak for moving past the light welterweight division, which is loaded with dangerous fighters in order to take on what many boxing fans feel is the weakest of the 147 lb. champions in Malignaggi.

You can’t blame the critics for dumping all over Broner because it does seem like a weak move by him to bypass the best fighters at 140 like Danny Garcia, Amir Khan, Zab Judah, Lamont Peterson and Lucas Matthysse in order to fight Malignaggi.

You can make a pretty good argument that all of those light welterweights would beat Malignaggi at this point, and maybe with ease. We already saw Khan easily beat Malignaggi by an 11th round TKO three years ago.

That fight was incredibly easy for Khan, and Malignaggi is still basically the same fighter now as he was then. The only difference is he’s fighting at 147 and holds the title after beating Vyacheslav Senchenko to pick up the strap last year.

There’s no question that Broner will beat Malignaggi. He’s got the better power, better speed, better defensive skills and the better inside game. A victory for Broner in this fight is pretty much academic.

What’s not known is whether Broner will choose to defend the title or dump it and slink back down to the 135 pound division to continue to defend his WBC lightweight strap against the mostly weak opposition down there. If that’s what Broner decides to do, and some fans think that’s what his plan is, then it’s a joke for him to be fighting Malignaggi for a title.

That’s a weak move because Broner is facing the perceived weakest champion instead of the best or even the second best. It’ll look much worse for Broner if he captures the title, and the instead of defending the title against the likes of Marcos Maidana and Diego Chaves, he dumps it to move back down to 135 to defend his WBC strap against poor opponents.



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