By Bill Phanco: WBC lightweight champion Adrien Broner (25-0, 21 KO’s) will be on the undercard of Floyd Mayweather Jr’s fight on May 4th at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, Nevada. Broner has a fight scheduled on February 16th next year against Gavin Rees, and he’s going to have to get through that fight without getting cut if he wants to fight three months later on the Mayweather Jr. card.
Broner must feel pretty confident he can get back in the ring so quickly after the February fight. The smart thing would be to move the Rees fight to the Mayweather card or cancel it and look for someone else to fight.
The Mayweather card could also have WBC junior middleweight champion Saul Alvarez fighting. Nothing is confirmed about this but the rumors are that he’ll be on the undercard. Alvarez reportedly is interested in facing WBA World junior middleweight champion Austin Trout, but it’s up to Golden Boy whether they’ll accept that idea.
They’d like to get a better known fighter like Miguel Cotto to face Alvarez, but that’s something that Alvarez has already said no to because of Cotto’s recent loss to Trout earlier this month. I guess Alvarez doesn’t need the criticism from boxing fans about fighting a guy that just lost instead of someone that’s winning. However, I suspect that Golden Boy will still push hard to get Cotto for Alvarez.
There’s no telling who will face Broner on this card. Broner wants WBO lightweight champion Ricky Burns, but it might take a lot of money for that fight to be made. Burns wants big money and it’s unclear whether Golden Boy will give him the money he wants to take the fight. From his perspective it makes sense that he gets as much money as he can because he’s got little chance of winning.
Burns doesn’t have the power, speed or defensive skills to beat Broner, and he’s not going to win a decision over him, not with Broner landing the harder shots in each round. If Burns wants too much money, Broner may have to fight someone like Raymundo Beltran or someone of that quality.
It’s not exactly the kind of an opponent that Broner needs for this kind of card. However, Broner’s still not interested in moving up in weight to light welterweight yet. He says he wants to clean out the division, which may not even be worth it because there’s no one really interesting to fight now that he’s beaten Antonio DeMarco.