By Dan Ambrose: Former WBC lightweight champion Omar Figueroa Jr. (27-0-1, 19 KOs) suffered a shoulder injury while training and he’s subsequently pulled out of his April 21st fight against former 4 division world champion Adrien ‘The Problem’ Broner (33-3, 24 KOs).
According to Dan Rafael, the 28-year-old Figueroa Jr. has pulled out of the Broner contest. The Broner-Figueroa Jr. fight was scheduled to be televised on Showtime Boxing in the main event. Broner’s management is looking to find a replacement opponent for him on the 21st of April card.
Given that Broner is scheduled to fight in the main event on the Showtime card, it’s going to need to be a good opponent for him to stay in that spot. With just 1 month to go before the April 21st fight date, it’s going to be tough to try and find someone with talent that will step in to replace Figueroa Jr. All the good fighters are busy at 140.
Figueroa Jr. has had injuries he’s dealt with during his career that has limited his activity few years. The shoulder problem appears to be a new issue. Figueroa Jr. didn’t fight in 2016. His last fight came in July of last year in a 3rd round TKO victory over former 2 division world champion Robert ‘The Ghost’ Guerrero. In watching recent video of Figueroa Jr. workout on a heavy bag, it appeared that he was being careful with his hands by hitting it without a lot of power. In seeing that video, it looked like Figueroa Jr. would be lucky to make it through training camp without an injury. Sure enough, Figueroa Jr. is injured and the Broner fight is off.
This will be a big disappointment for boxing fans not having the chance to see Broner face Figueroa Jr. on April 21. Fans were looking forward to that fight, as a lot of them believed that Figueroa had a real chance of beating Broner. It wouldn’t have been a huge upset for Figueroa Jr. to win the fight, as Broner was beaten easily by Mikey Garcia last July in a one-sided 12 round unanimous decision defeat.
Figueroa Jr. was in the position to finish Broner’s once promising career. But with Figueroa now out of the picture, Broner will very likely be matched against a beatable replacement opponent, and that’ll keep his career afloat for a little while longer. At this point though, Broner looks to be finished as a world championship level fighter. It’s unlikely that he’ll be able to turn things around unless a weaker fighter wins one of the vacated 140 lb. titles. Broner could then take advantage of the situation to capture a belt the uncomplicated way.
Broner should be happy that Figueroa Jr. has pulled out of the fight. Had the fight taken place, Broner very likely would have lost and that would have a sure career-ender for him.