PBC and Showtime are bringing us what looks to be on paper an entertaining main event headlined by former titleholders Adrien Broner and Jessie Vargas. The show will also feature the return of Jermall Charlo against Hugo Centeno Jr and Gervonta Davis making a defense of his super featherweight title against Jesus Cuellar.
Heading into his highly anticipated showdown with Mikey Garcia last summer, I had a lot to say about Adrien Broner (33-3, 24 KOs). It is all very much still relevant:
Maybe Adrien Broner 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.
All there really is to add to that old preview is the fact that Broner predictably went on to lose a decision against the much more talented and dedicated Mikey Garcia. This is what I had to say about Broner’s future after the fight:
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 sort of role. 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.
My prediction about how PBC would use their enigmatic star was a little off. Instead of giving him soft touches, they initially planned to put him in against Omar Figueroa. Omar doesn’t have the same complicated resume necessarily, but overall he is in a similar position to Broner in that he needs wins. Instead of building Adrien Broner back up, they were putting him in a crossroads fight. Jessie Vargas stepped in when Figueroa was hurt and dropped out.
To me Jessie Vargas (28-2, 10 KOs) is a tougher fight for Broner than Omar Figueroa would have been. Jessie has looked good in times, particularly in his wins over Antonio DeMarco and Sadam Ali. The latter has looked better and better over time as Ali moved up to junior middleweight and sent Puerto Rican legend Miguel Cotto into retirement with a dominant win. Jessie Vargas didn’t just edge out Ali either. He punished and stopped him in a fight that was extremely one sided after the first few rounds.
Sure, Jessie Vargas was dominated by the 2016 version of Manny Pacquiao and was beaten soundly on the cards against Tim Bradley, but those were truly elite welterweights. Adrien Broner is not an elite welterweight. Plus, Vargas had Bradley in all sorts of trouble at the end of their fight and was robbed of the chance to try to finish the former top welterweight when the referee mistook the ten second clap as the final bell. Bradley is famed for his durability and almost certainly would have survived in my view, but that doesn’t mean Jessie Vargas didn’t have a huge ten second opportunity stolen from him that night. I don’t think Adrien Broner does any better if given the same opportunities on the same nights against Pacquiao and Bradley.
I actually lean towards Jessie Vargas taking this fight. We could debate its merit as a Showtime main event in 2018, but Broner does draw some of the best viewership ratings for the premium network. His main event status won’t change until those numbers do. What I don’t think is up for debate is the fact that both of these men are capable of engaging in fan friendly fights. Broner’s volume isn’t always high, but his fights tend to bring a sense of drama. Jessie Vargas simply moves his hands with volume and skill. I like this fight a lot.
Jermall Charlo (26-0, 20 KOs) defends his secondary WBC middleweight belt in the co-main event against Hugo Centeno Jr (26-1, 14 KOs). Centeno looked pretty great in his surprising destruction of highly touted prospect Immanuwel Aleem last summer and his only loss was to highly underrated Polish contender Maciej Sulecki. Still, the general view here is that Charlo is just simply a higher class of athlete and fighter than Centeno is probably equipped to deal with. I’d agree. Charlo is dynamic, explosive, and a solid technical fighter. This is only his second fight at middleweight after a great 154 lb run that included wins over Austin Trout and J-Rock Williams, but it isn’t as if Centeno is some Danny Jacobs style huge middleweight. Again, Hugo Centeno is a good fighter with more pop in his shots than his record suggests. Maybe over the twelve round distance he can find something in there. I just wouldn’t count on it.
I am very interested in how Gervonta Davis (19-0, 18 KOs) looks in the show’s opener against Jesus Cuellar (28-2, 21 KOs). In winning and defending his first world title, Davis looked spectacular at a very young age against Jose Pedraza and in traveling abroad to blow Liam Walsh. Yet, last summer in his most recent fight, Davis missed weight. He also went on to look pretty pedestrian and strange in the ring against little known Francisco Fonseca. Even the stoppage was controversial as the last shot landed was clearly to the back of the head. Having missed weight, Davis was also stripped of his IBF belt. The WBA title on the line Saturday night might look like a replacement world title, but it is a secondary belt and nothing more. Alberto Machado holds the real WBA title at the weight.
Normally a missed weight cut and a single bad night for a young potential star isn’t the end of the world, but the reason I am concerned is a little beyond that. Maybe this isn’t totally fair, but Davis associates himself very closely with Adrien Broner and Robert Easter Jr outside of the ring. While Easter certainly is a less dramatic case than Saturday night’s A-side, both of these men have failed to live up to their obvious talent and early shown abilities in the ring. Framed against his idolization of Adrien Broner, the 23 year old’s struggles with weight and consistency in the ring becomes more alarming if he is out living that lifestyle. Hopefully he shows up here on point and back to his old self because former featherweight titleholder Jesus Cuellar (28-2, 21 KOs) can fight if Davis is out of shape again.
All in all this is an interesting show Saturday night on Showtime beginning at 9 PM Eastern time. What it lacks in true world title fights, it makes up for it in terms of compelling story lines coming into the night. Plus, Adrien Broner has been many things, but he has yet to be boring. Jessie Vargas isn’t the type of opponent Broner is likely to start having dull nights with either. I look forward to the card.
