By: Danny Kendrick
Looking impressive yet again, Adrien “The Problem” Broner took care of business in front of his hometown crowd in Cincinatti, Ohio with a 5th round stoppage of Vicente Escobedo, bringing his undefeated record to 24-0 with 20 KO’s. Escobedo came out behind the jab, but made the choice to try and box with a superior gifted boxer and paid the price. After the fourth round, Broner was heard telling his corner that he was about to start walking Escobedo down, most likely indicating that he had his rhythm firmly implemented in the fight and also, that he felt that he’d taken the best Escobedo had to offer and it was time to get him out of there.
From there, Broner did just what he claimed he was going to do and walked down Escobedo until Joel Diaz had seen enough to determine that his fighter didn’t need to stick around for anymore punishment and subsequently waved the towel in the corner. Broner, having been stripped of his WBO title for missing weight, planned on moving up to the 135 lb division anyway, threw out some potential next opponents, such as Brandon Rios, though he mentioned the often ridiculous and senseless possibility of, maybe, doing that fight at catch weight.
Perhaps that’ll be a safety net for Broner to make a weight allowance to insure that he won’t be stripped of anymore purse money such as the $60,000 he was fined for missing weight for tonight’s contest. Seriously though, Broner was big for the junior lightweight division so hopefully the move up will allow him to maybe even look stronger and better in his future ring appointments against bigger, stronger, and more skilled opposition. If Broner can look even better by not pulling as much weight, then it won’t look good for the rest of the lightweight division.
