Back in September during the Mayweather-Canelo weigh-in, Golden boy pulled out all the stops. They opened up the entire MGM Grand Garden Arena for the weigh-in, put up an elaborate stage and showcased roughly two dozen of their fighters in a parade of champions walk to the stage.
Included in the stage walk was Adrien “the problem” Broner and Marcos “Chino” Maidana. The fight between the two had just finished up negotiations for a December clash slated for Las Vegas and what was expected to be Broner’s first PPV headline.
While Broner had a strong viewers rating for his previous fights with Paulie Malignaggi and Antonio DeMarco they were on Showtime, furthermore the live gates were average attendance at best in both Brooklyn and Atlantic City respectively.
While Broner may make some ruckus on his twitter or instagram pages-His blueprint for becoming the next big fighter is to follow Floyd Mayweather’s lead. This includes adding a money nickname “about billions” in replace of “the problem” similar to that of Mayweather changing his name of “pretty boy” Floyd to “Money” Mayweather.
However as Mayweather only became a true bonafide PPV draw after his win over Oscar De La Hoya almost 10 years after he became a pro.Broner was trying to become a PPV.
Broner is not Mayweather nor is Maidana even considered a main event type of fighter.
So it was not really a surprise that Showtime and Goldenboy announced that the Broner-Maidana fight was going to Showtime and not PPV. What was a little surprising was that the fight was relocated from Las Vegas to San Antonio, especially with the fight being roughly six weeks out when the fight was relocated.
This fight is not a must see live or being billed as a fight of the year candidate and frankly Maidana is not a real threat to Broner. Sure Maidana has a punchers chance but that is about it.
Maidana is not in the same league as Broner.
Even with Broner taking his rap career semiserious he is still probably better than Maidana. Which may also be a reason that Showtime and Goldenboy decided that Broner was better on cable TV than PPV. In the last couple months Broner has done some highly questionable things on social media-From his picture with two women giving him fellatio to the three-some video that some how mysteriously ended up online, Broner is simply not a PPV draw nor is he a fair weather boxing fans fighter. Broner rubs people the wrong way. Furthermore, Broner could not sell out US Bank arena in his hometown of Cincinnati or even the Boardwalk Hall in Atlantic City, New Jersey. He would have a hard time filing up the lower bowl of MGM Grand Garden Arena. Perhaps that is a reason as to why Goldenboy relocated the fight to San Antonio. A location that boasts a large Mexican audience that will attended boxing because Mexicans fans are the most die hards fans the US has.
Broner may have 140,000 followers on Instagram but that means little when it comes to paid tickets to his fights. That should be obvious with the location Goldenboy chose for the fight and moving the fight off of PPV.
Broner may call himself “About Billions” but between his child support payments and his love of spending he will be lucky to call himself about millions when his fight career is all said and done.
And then…
October was a good month of boxing. Alvarado-Provodnikov was a littler surprising, I thought Alvarado had enough power to keep Ruslan off him but Ruslan proved he was the better boxer. Alvarado has been able to use his power up until now against lesser opponents that could not exploit Alvarado’s lack of boxing skills. Ruslan dominated Alvarado the entire fight and as a guy mentioned before the fight that maybe the Rios fights took something out of Alvarado. It certainly looked like it had when he faced Ruslan. Alvarado should take a good break from the ring but at 33 he does not have much of a window left to keep open add his fighting style and while the fans appreciate it, his shelf life expiration in the ring is closer than I believe he would like to think.
The HBO Face Off between Brandon Rios and Manny Pacquiao reaffirms my stance that Rios has no shot. His defensiveness in the spot has me thinking that he needs to prove that he is different that Antonio Margarito and he will try and switch up his fighting style. While Manny may not be that big of a fighter what he did to Margarito should serve as a reminded that Rios is exactly like Maragrito, A slow footed forward fighter that falls in the fighting style Pacquiao thrives against. I see Rios being ruined after this fight.