In a career defining performance, Mikey Garcia absolutely dominated Adrien Broner over twelve rounds at the Barclay Center on Showtime. Garcia was unable to become the first to finish Broner, but the fight wasn’t close. It was boxing lesson. Jermall Charlo was also victorious in his WBC eliminator, but a leg injury to Jorge Sebastian Heiland sullied that fight quite a bit.
Mikey Garcia (37-0, 30 KOs) simply put on a masterclass in the ring at the expense of Adrien Broner (33-3, 24 KOs). After a first round in which Broner won due to Garcia’s lack of activity, it was all Mikey. He used precision punching, technically perfect footwork, and a consistent sense of pressure to widely outpoint a former four division titlist. The scores came back 117-111 and 116-112 twice. I scored it even wider, 118-110.
Large parts of the fight were spent with Broner’s guard up and Mikey firing at will. Instead of shooting back, Adrien would often just shake his head or talk to his attacker in a hollow effort to dismiss the blows as missing or otherwise ineffective. The Cincinnati fighter landed single shots here and there, but he failed to try to sustain an attack until it was too late. In the eighth round, the usually stoic Garcia uncharacteristically fought with his hands down for about half the round, egging Broner into throwing.
It didn’t work until the ninth. Broner began to try to rally there and it was the only round other than the first that I gave him. He kept the pressure up in the tenth, but Garcia re-established his rhythm and threw near one hundred punches in return. Mikey worked the body particularly well tonight, something he does not usually focus on. He used all these things to close the final two rounds strong against a more aggressive Broner to seal his big win.
For Mikey Garcia, he can go anywhere from here. Maybe he goes down to lightweight to meet the Linares/Campbell winner or a moving up Vasyl Lomachenko. At 140, the Crawford/Indongo winner will be awfully tempting. He even says he is willing to go up to 147 where there is a laundry list of big fights to be made. That might be one step too far though.
For Adrien Broner, this is a bigger set back than I think he even realizes. He now has three really clear, really wide losses. This one was to a smaller man moving up in weight to meet him. There are a lot of good, fun fights to be made for Broner still, but the illusion of him as a true top of the division fighters is now ended. He was focused and in shape here, just not really that good overall. Now he is largely in the Andre Berto/Victor Ortiz sot of role now. PBC is likely to find him an easy win or two and then put him in to lose to a real top welterweight over and over again going forward.
In the co-main event, Jermall Charlo (26-0, 20 KOs) won his middleweight debut and an eventual shot at the WBC belt, but he did so in a really strange way. His Argentinian opponent Jorge Sebastian Heiland (29-5-2, 16 KOs) clearly came into the fight with something wrong with at least his left leg, if not with both. Heiland is a good fighter, but on his best day he would struggle with Jermall Charlo due to both a serious athleticism deficiency and a bad style match up to boot. This was not his best day. Heiland was hurt a couple times, but I don’t think he was really hurt from a shot when the fight was stopped. He just couldn’t stand anymore.
As reported by Jim Gray, Heiland had originally came to the ring with his left knee taped up. Apparently that is non-regulation, however, so he and his team had to remove it. According to those who watched, Heiland also was moving funny at the weigh in. It really is a shame he felt he needed to take this fight despite a massive disadvantage, but Heiland did and this was the unsatisfying result.
In addition to the two fight Showtime main card, there was a two fight online stream presented by Showtime on a variety of platforms. Its main event was a heavyweight fight in which Jarrell Miller (19-0-1, 17 KOs) forced a stoppage after the eighth round over Gerald Washingon (18-2, 12 KOs). Washington wasn’t really hurt, but he was receiving a slow beating and referee Gary Rosato saw it fit to call an end to the fight due to accumulation. Miller put in a high volume, workman like performance here that should net him another fairly prominent fight the next time out. At 300 pounds, Miller is several weight classes bigger than everyone he fights. Despite his technical limitations, he is a reasonable athlete at that size to boot. Overall, his game isn’t good enough to carry him past this level alone, but it plus that size just could be.
Opening the two fight online prelims stream, Katie Taylor (6-0, 4 KOs) predictably beat up overmatched Texan Jasmine Clarkson (4-9) until the fight was stopped after the third round. The beating wasn’t such that a fight normally would have been stopped at that point, but girls or something I guess. Regardless, it wasn’t competitive and never was going to be.
