Jon Campbell – On the back of Broner’s impressive display in ending Eloy Perez’s undefeated record, it is beginning to become clear that we have a potential great on our hands. At 22 years old Broner is a titleholder with ridiculous handspeed, a great philly-shell defense without complete willingness to fight from the pocket and rarely feels the need to dance around.
Moving forward with a career like this one is very important in terms of how he will be remembered by the history books.. It is true that he is young but for him to reach the great heights of the likes of Dela Hoya, Mayweather and Pacquaio, he must begin to achieve greatness now and not wait around. With an amateur career like his and the skill set he posseses, I do not see the issue with testing Broner right away.
He has a number of possible opponents in his weight vacinity who may be worthwhile, at his current weight division two of the better options are the tall Mexican two-time champion Juan Carlos Salgado, and the Japanese Knockout specialist WBA champ Takashi Uchiyama. Now both of these has been impressive from what I have seen and are worthy titleholders. Despite this they in my opinion would be defeated by Broner with relative ease, but this should not deter Broner from taking the fight. Presuming he will move up quite far in weights throught his career (as i expect), it is important that at least one or two are completely cleared should that fighter want to be considered for P4P succes and all-time greatness. Fortunatly for Broner, similarly for Pacquaio earlier in his career, the Super-Featherweight division is a good one to start. He should spendno more than 2 years clearing the division, hopefully getting a fight with Orlando salido in the process should he decide to move up.
Beyond this Broner will be looking upwards for his pool of future opposition. At Lightweight we have the already great Juan Manuel Marquez, who has stated he may retire by the years end, regardless, should he fail to secure a fourth fight with Pacquaio he may consider a fight with Broner. This fight will most likely not happen of course and I do not believe it should, as Marquez’s experience will render in extremely difficult for Broner, albeit should he have been five years forward in hiscareer this would have made for an all-time match-up.
Other possible Lightweight opponents would be the British Mexican champ Miguel Vasquez, whos only losses are two to Saul Alvarez and one to Timothy Bradley. This fight would be better as Vasquez is younger, stronger and the two could have a competitive bout which would test what Broner is made of. Without wishing Broner’s career away I would advise him to only fight 2-3 fights at Lightweight against maybe Ricky Burns and Vasquez before heading towards the big money and talented pool of fighters in the Light-Welterweight and Welterweight divisions.
To conclude, in ten years time I am sure that we will have a great career to look back at. The manner in which he and his team are planning its direction from this day forward is unknown but something along these lines is what I would advise him. One fight which may currently appear unthinkable but one I hope is a future super-fight in 5 or so years time against Amir Khan, as i see these two to be at the top of the game at this time, or at least the top of that region in weight. What is certain is that with rising stars such as Alvarez, Khan and Broner, we cannot by no means claim that boxing is on a decline in terms of its production of greatness.