By Bill Phanco: For some reason WBC lightweight champion Adrien Broner (25-0, 21 KO’s) is totally content in fighting at in the talent empty 135 pound division despite its total lack of talent and big names. Broner says he’s fine with staying in this division until he totally clears it out of the top names.
Unfortunately there isn’t any top names in the division now that Broner beat the best guy Antonio DeMarco. The rest of the names now are all smaller names, fighters that the American boxing public has never heard of aside from the hardcore boxing fans.
Broner said to espn.com “They [the boxing public] want me to just automatically go up to 140. No. I just moved up to his weight…I make the weight comfortably, so I’m going to stay here for a lot of good fights that I still can have at 135 pounds. So I’m going to flush out this lightweight division.”
Some boxing fans would read that and assume that Broner is taking the easy way in a division lacking quality fighters that can test him. Broner fights at 135, but he comes into his fights weighing in the mid-140s. In other words, Broner is basically a welterweight fighting at lightweight against the no name fighters. It doesn’t make sense. Broner has the size to fight at light welterweight or welterweight now and get much, much bigger fights than he’ll get fighting obscure fighters at lightweight.
Some fans think Broner is doing this because he doesn’t want to face any risks that he would have if he moved up to light welterweight and was expected to fight the likes of Amir Khan, Lucas Matthysse, Danny Garcia and Brandon Rios. If Broner moved up to welterweight, fans would expect him to fight guys like Kell Brook, Manny Pacquiao, Victor Ortiz, Tim Bradley, his hero Floyd Mayweather Jr, and maybe even Saul Alvarez at a catch weight. But by staying at 135, Broner has no one that can trouble him, so he’s able to dominate the division and pad his record for a long time.
Broner has a mismatch scheduled next month against Gavin Rees (37-1-1, 18 KO’s) at the Boardwalk Hall in Atlantic City, New Jersey. This fight isn’t even seen as a fight. It’s already being seen as a massacre because Rees has been fighting nothing but European and domestic level opposition for the past four years ever since he was knocked out by Andriy Kotelnik in losing his WBA light welterweight title back in 2008.