In an interview with FightHype, trainer Mike Stafford seems to know what his fighter has to do come fight night with John Molina Jr in the other corner. When discussing the fight, Stafford came right out and said that Broner would need to box this guy to get the win.
Whether he outboxes him and uses his skills to take the decision, or turns up the heat later and gets the stoppage, he would need to stick to a strict gameplan to win this one. I agree with this approach, as we saw from the Maidana fight that Broner could potentially have trouble with powerful, come forward type fighters.
In the interview, Stafford mentioned that they had been working on his technical skills and defense and this is what they have planned in camp to be really effective when against Molina. John Molina is a tricky type opponent to face. At the end of they day Molina has 5 losses in his 32 fights and 2 of those have been as a result of a stoppage. Due to these losses there is only so much credit Broner is going to get for winning this one, but at the same time if he were to lose you could really see a career in crisis for Broner.
Molina is the type of guy who could pull off the upset as well. In 2013 he stopped Mickey Bey in the last round of a fight where he had lost every minute of every round up to that point. Then in 2014 he put Matthysse down twice and cut him before ultimately being stopped himself in the eleventh round of a terrific bout. These results go to show that he is a danger man in his own right and has the power to create the upset. On top of this Molina is currently coming off the only two consecutive losses of his career. This is really a fight he needs to win if he wants his career to stay at this level and so you can bet he is treating training camp like his livelihood depends on it.
Ultimately I expect to see a good fight on March 7th. Stafford also mentioned that Broner had been sparring with a lot of 147lb fighters and so hopefully will be partially accustomed to taking the heavy shots Molina can dish out. 12-14 rounds at a time, three days a week. At the end of the day these are two talented guys and hopefully there will be some fireworks as long as it lasts.
