By: Danny Kendrick
“The Problem” continues….
One of boxing’s brightest and brash young stars looks to continue his rise among the sport’s elite this Saturday night in trying to add another statistic to his body count. Welcome to the Adrien Broner Show! Adrien “The Problem” Broner (23-0, 19 KO’s) gloves up and goes to battle against Vicente Escobedo (24-3, 14 KO’s) on Saturday night in his stomping grounds of Cincinatti, Ohio from the U.S. Bank Arena. If you haven’t been able to partake in the viewing of a Broner fight, then don’t blink, you might miss it and that’s meant in more than one way. Broner has the God gifted talent of very fast hands and power. You blink and you might miss him throw 3-4 punches, blink again and you may miss the ending.
What could very well be the next Mayweather in the making, Broner is a bit more flashy than the pound for pound top fighter in the world and in that way makes him more like a young Meldrick Taylor or Roy Jones, Jr., but his combination of speed, power, footwork, and intelligent defense certainly makes him reminiscent of “Money” especially when Floyd was fighting at the same weight class with a higher KO ratio. The WBO super featherweight champion has only gone the distance 4 times in his young career with only one of those being a 10 round fight in which he won a somewhat disagreeable unanimous decision over Daniel Ponce De Leon on March 5, 2011. Besides that, Broner has been nothing short of magnificent in dusting off 19 out of 23 opponents by KO, most of those coming within the first 4 rounds.
He’ll have his toughest test to date since his gritty struggle against De Leon on Saturday night against Vicente Escobedo. Escobedo has been in with the likes of tough former champions Michael Katsidis and Robert “The Ghost” Guerrero, whom he came up just short in with a split decision loss to Katsidis and dropping a unanimous decision to Guerrero. Like Broner, Escobedo boasts of a very successful amateur background having defeated names like Paulie Malignaggi and Anthony Peterson. He’s going to need every bit of guts and grit against the younger and faster power puncher. Having been a year of upsets thus far and not far removed up the Garcia/Khan upset, let’s not count Escobedo out, but in all likelihood, this is another grooming experience for the talented young champion in continuing his dominance of the weight class en route to a potential Fight of the Year candidate against another of the division’s scariest young studs with the uber dangerous, Yuriorkis Gamboa. It’s a showdown that’s exciting enough to make you salivate with anticipation, but first let’s get to this Saturday night and enjoy what’s in front of us.
