Mike Stafford, the trainer for former three division world champion Adrien Brorner (30-1, 22 KOs), says his fighter is really motivated to beat Shawn Porter (25-1-1, 16 KOs) this Saturday night in their fight on Premier Boxing Champions on NBC at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, Nevada.
Stafford says Broner is bothered that boxing fans see Saturday’s clash as a pretty much even affair that could go either way, almost like a coin toss. Broner takes issue with this because he twice sparred Porter in the past and got the better of him, says Stafford. Broner feels confident from those two sparring sessions that he’s going to be able to beat the hard hitting Porter on Saturday.
“That fires him [Broner] up,” Stafford said to thesweetscience.com about boxing fans see the Broner-Porter fight as a tossup.
You can understand why fans would see the Broner-Porter fight as an even money fight when you recall how bad Broner looked against Marcos Maidana in 2013. Broner didn’t handle Maidana’s pressure well at all, and he ended up getting knocked down twice in losing the fight by a 12 round decision. Porter has a fighting style very similar to Maidana, but not quite as big or as powerful. Porter’s style of fighting is close enough to Maidana for him to have a very, very good chance of beating Broner.
Stafford went on to say that Broner got the better of Porte during their sparring sessions together, saying “You can’t bully nobody and box. The bullies I know got beat up, or they not around anymore. This is boxing, two men and a referee, the ref don’t allow the hitting behind the head and stuff. That’s why it’s called boxing, not street-fighting, or football.”
A loss for Broner against Porter would end his dreams of being the guy that takes over for Floyd Mayweather Jr. when he retires. Broner thinks that he’s going to be the next huge pay-per-view attraction in the sport. Two years ago, Broner thought he was on the verge of moving from fighting on regular Showtime to fighting on PPV. Those plans were abruptly halted when Maidana defeat Broner by a 12 round decision in unseating him as the IBF welterweight champion. The loss sent Broner back down in weight to the light welterweight division, where he’s won his last three fights against Carlos Molina, Emmanuel Taylor and John Molina.
While Broner and Stafford might have problems with fans who see his fight against Porter as being a 50-50 affair, the fact of the matter is that the fight is an even one. Broner is fighting out of his weight class against a guy that is bigger and stronger than him in Porter.
Broner’s management came up with the idea of using a 144 pound catch-weight and a 10 pound rehydration clause to make sure that Broner has a better chance of winning, but that doesn’t take away from Porter being the bigger and stronger guy. He’s still superior to Broner in the power department, and he’s the more aggressive fighter. Porter is also capable of throwing more punches without a rest than Broner.
