Tonight’s Showtime Championship Boxing is in the books. The main event saw an entertaining battle between two back end top ten welterweights in Adrien Broner and Jessie Vargas. After twelve hard fought rounds, neither man had his hand raised in the end.
Jessie Vargas (28-2-1, 10 KOs) had quite the easy first two rounds against Adrien Broner (33-3-1, 24 KOs). In the first round he won the jabbing contest. In the second Jessie started letting his power punches go in a big way. Adrien Broner just did his thing in there and that lately is doing nothing at all. New trainer Kevin Cunningham got on his case in between rounds for not punching. A minor war broke out in the third round as Broner did let his hands go more in response, but Jessie Vargas was still outthrowing and outlanding him. The question here was whether or not Vargas could maintain his volume.
The Cincinnati man came out ripping beautiful right hands in the first minute of the fourth. Vargas responded pretty well with some great shots of his own in another exciting round, but for the first time I thought AB got the better of it despite Jessie getting off over 100 shots. The fifth was similar in that it was Broner’s accuracy and sharpness that I preferred over the Las Vegas native’s volume. This sixth round was a regression for Adrien Broner, unfortunately. He stopped letting his hands go again and lost the round. I had Jessie Vargas up four rounds to two at the halfway mark.
Jessie Vargas carried his lunch pail and hard hat into the second half of the fight with a workmanlike win of the seventh round. The eighth was one of the harder frames to score. Vargas looked a little tired early and AB did great work, but Vargas rallied big in the last minute to likely steal the round back largely on body work. He didn’t rally back in the ninth. After a decent start to the round, a tiring Jessie Vargas was lit up in the last twenty seconds or so of the round. He took it pretty well, but Broner landed some huge shots to clearly win the ninth.
Unfortunately, Adrien Broner did not maintain the pace in the tenth round. He rallied a bit in the final seconds, but Vargas carried the round on his basic one twos. AB just didn’t punch consistently yet again. That was the seventh round I scored for Jessie Vargas, meaning he had the fight if he stayed on his feet. I will note that Showtime’s Steve Farhood had it much closer at this point though, even after ten.
I don’t see how the eleventh could be scored for anyone other than Jessie Vargas. He boxed really well behind his jab and largely neutralized his fresher opponent. Kevin Cunningham told Broner that he needed to act like he needed a knockout and to not stop punching going into the twelfth, but he didn’t act on that. Both men were pretty tired and not a lot was accomplished in the final round.
This was an exciting main event to an entertaining card. My final scorecard came back 116-112 in favor of Jessie Vargas. Showtime’s Steve Farhood had it a 114-114 draw. I think that is as generous as you could be for Adrien Broner in scoring this one. Cards came back first 114-113 for Broner and then 114-114 twice for a majority draw. I don’t have a huge issue with it, though I did think Jessie Vargas won.
Post-fight Broner threw a hissy fit about the cards and the two men argued awkwardly face to face. Man, Adrien Broner can be an embarrassment in there. Jessie Vargas comically told him to calm down at the end of his weird little tantrum and eventually AB did, or at least he did as much as he could. He still gave a pretty antagonistic interview with Jim Gray. I think it ended with some racial slurs, but I couldn’t really understand where he was going with it.
