By Keith Idec
Adrien Broner doesn’t buy it.
The former four-division champion has heard Mikey Garcia say he’ll pressure Broner throughout their 12-round, 140-pound fight July 29. But Broner believes that the cerebral Garcia will heed the advice of former stablemate Marcos Maidana, who has referred to Broner as the hardest puncher he has fought.
Argentina’s Maidana (35-5, 31 KOs) and Southern California’s Garcia (36-0, 30 KOs) have very different styles, but Maidana was trained for the Broner bout by Robert Garcia, Mikey’s older brother and trainer. Mikey Garcia has said the information Maidana provided has been useful while preparing for boxing Broner (33-2, 24 KOs, 1 NC) later this month at Barclays Center in Brooklyn (Showtime).
Maidana dropped Broner twice and won a unanimous decision over the Cincinnati native in their 12-round welterweight title fight 3½ years ago in San Antonio. Broner still doesn’t expect the favored Garcia to be as aggressive and audacious as Maidana, especially since Garcia is moving up from 135 pounds to face an opponent who has competed as high as welterweight.
“He’s not gonna stand in front of me,” Broner told Showtime’s Brian Custer for one of the network’s previews. “Nobody do. Everybody say they gonna stand in front of me, but they don’t. Even if you look at the Shawn Porter fight, he didn’t stand in front of me and fight me how he fought a Paulie [Malignaggi] or Keith Thurman. He didn’t fight me like that. He was bouncing around and doing all that rugged bullcrap. He didn’t come straight forward and try to bully through me.
“Adrian Granados, another one. He didn’t fight me the way he fought Amir Imam [in an eighth-round TKO win]. He didn’t do it. So when guys look at the Maidana fight, and they like, ‘Oh, we’re gonna pressure him,’ you know, once they feel my power they change they mind.”
Porter (27-2-1, 17 KOs), a former IBF welterweight champion, beat Broner by unanimous decision two years ago in Las Vegas, but Broner dropped Porter in the 12th round. In his last fight, Broner beat the rugged Granados (18-5-2, 12 KOs) by split decision in a 10-rounder February 18 in Cincinnati.
2023-10-18 22:29:14
