This Saturday Showtime Championship Boxing features one of the bigger fights of the year between three division world titlist Miguel “Mikey” Garcia and polarizing four division titleholder Adrien “The Problem” Broner. The co-main event of the card will bring former junior middleweight belt holder Jermall Charlo up to middleweight to face underrated Argentinian Jorge Sebastian Heiland. This is must see TV for fight fans everywhere.
Maybe Adrien Broner (33-2, 24 KOs) has not had the career that he could have had based on his talent, but even if he took a somewhat easy route in doing so, he still pulled off four wins for world titles in four different weight classes. This puts him in very elite company as less than twenty fighters have accomplished this feat. He has also always kept himself in the larger boxing cultural conversation due to his larger than life antics. Love him or hate him, Adrien Broner matters to the sport.
In hindsight, it makes perfect sense that Adrien Broner’s high profile debut to the boxing public was covered in controversy. In March of 2011, the Cincinnati native made his HBO debut against featherweight brawler Daniel Ponce De Leon. As an opponent, De Leon was being brought up to junior lightweight and fought an aggressive, open style that on paper fed right into a brilliant young athlete like Broner. The fight didn’t pan out that way though. Broner struggled with his opponent, winning the bulk of the middle of the fight but losing the beginning and end. HBO scored the fight for Daniel Ponce De Leon, but it was really close and Broner escaped with a very close unanimous decision win.
The Problem had an answer for his reputation as a prospect in his next fight, however, as he blitzed contender Jason Litzau in one round on a high profile HBO Canelo undercard. Next he fought for his first title, a belt vacated by Ricky Burns at 130. Broner won and defended the title once, both times with strong early knockouts as his power was huge at junior lightweight. In his second defense, however, he missed weight by several pounds and was stripped of his belt despite another first half of the fight KO win.
Broner was a very big junior lightweight who was getting a little older, so missing weight there is not the end of the world. He moved up and immediately won a lightweight belt from Antonio DeMarco by eighth round stoppage. He defended it once, but then immediately jumped two weight classes to welterweight to fight for Pauli Malignaggi’s welterweight belt. It was a close fight and Malignaggi cried robbery, but most media thought that Broner narrowly edged it. He didn’t look nearly as dynamic up seventeen pounds from his first title reign though. Broner also created a lot of controversy with the way he handled his relationship with Malignaggi’s ex-girlfriend during the build up as well, going as far as to tell Paulie that he “stole your belt and your girl” post fight.
Broner’s antics were really starting to kick into high gear during this era. He fake proposed to his girlfriend after a fight, instead asking her to brush his hair at the last moment with her seemingly unaware that he was going to do this. He made a pretty ridiculous rap video to sell his young rich guy persona. He posted two videos of him literally flushing money down toilets. Worse, a video circulated of him having to be pulled off a stripper at a club that he was trying to, uh, enjoy, and then drunkenly insulting her.
Maybe it was his lifestyle, maybe it was the weight, or maybe a combination thereof, but everything caught up to Broner in his first welterweight title defense against Marcos Maidana. He was battered around the ring that night. Maidana dropped The Problem twice on his way to taking his belt. Broner responded by dropping down to junior welterweight, a class he had entirely skipped, and there he ran off three straight wins against good but not quite world class competition.
In 2015, Broner met welterweight “Showtime” Shawn Porter. Despite having had a welterweight title, Broner insisted they fight at a catchweight between junior and full welterweight. This was widely viewed as a move to deplete Porter, but it didn’t work. A consummate professional and basically the opposite of Adrien, Porter seemingly easily made weight and went on to rough up and comfortably outpoint Broner. Porter did have to survive a serious twelfth round knockdown to see the final bell though.
The enigmatic, Cincinnati fighter is 3-0 since then. including picking up a fourth world title at junior welterweight. Just winning hasn’t been the focus of his narrative though. To begin with, the title won was vacant and he was given a fighter coming off a loss to win it over. In his first defense, he missed weight and lost the belt. He may have been on course to lose to B level fighter Ashley Theophane as well, but a ninth round rally aided by a bad, missed low blow saved him. In his most recent fight, Broner narrowly outpointed Adrian Granados in what was supposed to be a junior welterweight fight, but Broner’s camp changed the weight last minute to full welterweight when it was clear he was going to make it.
Much worse, during this span Broner was brought in on assault charges, and these were far from his first. He was arrested later again on old warrants after being pulled over due to his van being riddled with bullet holes. He got suspended by one of the sanctioning bodies for making racial jokes in a post-fight interview. In 2016, he was accused again of assault, this time including him having stolen $14,000 that Broner had lost in bowling alley bets. While those charges too were dropped, he managed to get sentenced to thirty days in prison anyway for showing up to a court mandated hearing “three hours late and drunk.”
This was a lot to write on one man, but Adrien Broner is someone people have a lot to say about. He certainly brings life to the sport and holds onto a spotlight bigger than he may deserve based on performance, but you are guaranteed that there is never a dull moment when he is in the picture. Again here Broner is expected to make 140 pounds, something he failed at in his last two fights. Reportedly, however, there is a $500,000 fine written into the contract if he fails to, so he probably will. Or maybe he won’t and end up blowing this whole thing up. I wouldn’t put anything past Adrien Broner at this point.
I can be much more concise about Miguel “Mikey” Garcia (36-0, 30 KOs). A Californian Mexican-American, Garcia doesn’t bring drama. Instead, he brings supreme skill and a whole lot of punching power. The three division champion is simply just one of the best fighters in all of the sport.
Garcia won his first title at featherweight, scoring an eight round technical decision over a real top fighter in Orlando Salido. He put Salido down three times in that fight before it was stopped due to Garcia’s nose being badly injured by an “accidental”, Salido patented headbutt. Garcia had earned that fight too by knocking out quality contenders like Bernabe Concepcion and Jonathon Victor Barros on HBO and Showtime along the way.
Mikey tried to defend the belt, but he failed to make weight because he was just too big for featherweight. He knocked out Puerto Rican star JuanMa Lopez anyway though before moving up. Garcia immediately won a junior lightweight belt in his first fight at the weight. Again, it was over a really good fighter in Rocky Martinez, and again it was by knockout. Garcia defended the belt one more time. Then he vanished.
It was a contract dispute that for a while derailed his career. To simplify, Garcia and his team felt Top Rank wasn’t fulfilling the terms of the contract and that it was therefore void. Top Rank, of course, disagreed. This kept Mikey Garcia out of the ring for two and a half of his prime years. Boxing didn’t forget him, but it stripped him of his title and moved on unsure if the sport would ever seen the undefeated former champion again.
The issue was finally settled last summer, however, and Garcia returned. He took a fall tune up and then jumped into a lightweight title fight against new titlist Dejan Zlaticanin of Montenegro this past January. I thought Zlaticanin had the look of a potentially good fighter on the world scene, but it didn’t matter. Garcia put him out with a knockout of the year candidate in only three rounds. Now he is moving up to junior welterweight to face Broner.
That is my only hang up here. I am worried about the weight. Garcia will be looking at 140 lbs for the first time while Broner has won a title above that number. Plus, I can’t help but wonder if the $500,000 potential fine might actually be enough to motivate Broner to show up really in shape. If he has to work hard at that, he might be more focused on work and less on his chaotic life too. I am not sure he has been in optimal shape or focused at all since he moved up from lightweight.
I don’t think this stuff will matter. I believe that because Mikey Garcia is just so much better than Adrien Broner, even Broner at his best and Garcia above his optimal weight will still result in Garcia easily win by a wide outclassing. It can’t be entirely dismissed though. Still, if I had to submit a prediction, I’d go Garcia by wide unanimous decision. It also must be mentioned that given Garcia’s tendency to counter and Broner’s relatively low punch output, this likely won’t be a fight of the year candidate. Yet, I am excited anyway. In its own weird way, this is a bit of a super fight. It will be great just to see these two in the ring together at the opening bell.
Chief support belongs to former junior middleweight titleholder Jermall Charlo (25-0, 19 KOs) making his middleweight debut in a WBC title eliminator against Argentinian contender Jorge Sebastian Heiland (29-4-2, 16 KOs). Should he prove victorious, Charlo is chasing the GGG/Canelo winner here and he may or may not get it. Canelo has issues with the WBC and may not accept their title should he win against GGG, so Charlo should really be rooting for Golovkin if that is the title fight he wants.
As a fight, this should be a good, if not potentially one sided one. Jermall, the better of the two Charlo twins, is a real talent. He is rightfully the big favorite here as he is coming off two big wins over Austin Trout and J-Rock Williams, the latter of which by a pretty great knockout. Jorge Heiland himself is a bit underrated though. Almost three years ago now, Heiland went to Ireland and obliterated top British contender Matthew Macklin. Since then he has been sitting on that win fighting lesser fighters back in Argentina waiting for his big shot. Well, here it is.
Off television and on a Showtime Facebook stream, heavyweight prospect Jarrell Miller (18-0-1, 16 KOs) gets a nice step up fight against recent Wilder challenger Gerald Washington (18-1-1, 12 KOs). Irish female boxing sensation Katie Taylor (5-0, 3 KOs) is making her US debut here too on the same stream. Somewhat frustratingly, however, two former titleholders in Rau’shee Warren (14-2, 4 KOs) and McJoe Arroyo (17-1, 8 KOs) meet in a super flyweight title eliminator and that will not be shown in any capacity.
Either way, this is still a great show. Tune in at 9 PM Eastern, live on Showtime. The online stream begins at 7:15.
