By Keith Idec
There are various reasons for boxing fans to root for Adrian Granados to upset Adrien Broner on Saturday night.
Granados seems like a genuinely good dude, a career-long grinder who’s appreciative of the opportunity Broner has afforded him. And most everyone loves an underdog, the role Granados clearly will play in their 10-round welterweight fight in Broner’s hometown of Cincinnati.
The 27-year-old Granados could “change his life” by beating Broner, an upset he hopes to pull off to honor the memory of his slain friend, Ed Brown. The promising welterweight prospect, who trained alongside Granados for many years in Chicago, was shot to death two months ago a few blocks away from the gym at which they trained.
Of course, the fact that Granados is boxing Broner will provide more than enough motivation for many fight fans to cheer for Granados in this Showtime Championship Boxing main event (9 p.m. ET/6 p.m. PT). We’ve seen a more mature Broner during the promotion of this card at Xavier University’s Cintas Center, but Broner’s bad behavior in the past could make it difficult for the former four-division champion to convert some critics into supporters.
However you feel about Broner, there’s at least one good reason to want Broner to overcome the gritty Granados. If Broner loses Saturday night, we can forget about ever seeing a Broner-Manny Pacquiao fight.
A bout between even this 38-year-old version of Pacquiao and the Broner who has lost to Marcos Maidana and Shawn Porter remains one of the most fascinating fights that can be made in boxing.
And at this point, it’s obvious Broner and Pacquiao need one another now more than ever.
The 27-year-old Broner is going on two years without having a big fight, and that’s if you even count his 12-round, unanimous-decision defeat to Porter in June 2015 as a big fight. In the 20 months since Porter survived a 12th-round knockdown to beat Broner, “The Problem” has had trouble securing anything resembling a high-profile fight.
He stopped Khabib Allakhverdiev in the 12th round in Cincinnati about six months prior to his ninth-round stoppage of Ashley Theophane in his last fight, which was televised by Spike from Washington, D.C., on April 1. Now that he has overcome legal troubles related to a January 2016 incident at a Cincinnati bowling alley, as well as a suicide scare, Broner will face one of his former sparring partners in what’s perceived, perhaps incorrectly, as a hometown showcase against an opponent that doesn’t operate on his level.
If Broner (32-2, 24 KOs) is to make major money after he squares off against Granados (18-4-2, 12 KOs), pursuing Pacquiao probably is his best option.
He wouldn’t make as much money for remaining at welterweight to face the winner of either the Danny Garcia-Keith Thurman or Kell Brook-Errol Spence Jr. fights. Besides, at his advanced age, Pacquiao probably is more beatable than Garcia, Thurman, Brook or Spence.
Regardless, Pacquiao (59-6-2, 38 KOs) is smaller than those four fighters. Fighting him at 140 pounds, or somewhere within a few pounds north of the junior welterweight limit, should be appealing to Broner.
He hasn’t been at his best as a full-fledged welterweight. You need not looking beyond his loss to Maidana, in which Broner was dropped twice, and his narrow win against Paulie Malignaggi for evidence.
Above all else, and this can’t be stressed enough, he’d make more money for fighting Pacquiao. That should motivate Broner to fight Pacquiao even at the welterweight limit of 147 pounds, if Pacquiao prefers that weight.
Pacquiao indisputably needs Broner, too.
Whether he fights unknown Australian contender Jeff Horn in the United Arab Emirates or Australia, he’s still fighting Jeff Horn. Pacquiao apparently will be paid handsomely for facing the No. 2 contender for his WBO welterweight title April 22, but that complete mismatch more than likely will amount to a waste of fans’ time and a precious piece of whatever’s left of the twilight of the Filipino superstar’s career.
Coming off that shameless money grab, placing Pacquiao in a marketable, competitive pay-per-view event against Broner would be a wise way to move past the fan backlash facing Horn surely will create.
“I don’t even know who that guy is, no disrespect to him,” Broner said recently regarding Horn. “I’ve never seen him fight, but if he got a chance to fight Manny Pacquiao he’s obviously not a bum. But at the end of the day, we all know what a fight like Manny Pacquiao and Adrien Broner will do. So they need to stop dragging they feet and make it happen.”
It isn’t often the boxing world would wholeheartedly agree with Broner, but he’s 100-percent correct about this.
Pacquiao-Horn likely will be televised via pay-per-view, which could lead to a third straight pay-per-view failure since Pacquiao’s long-awaited showdown with Floyd Mayweather Jr. generated more than $600 million in overall revenue in May 2015. If the full-time senator is to keep his lucrative moonlighting gig, he’ll need to be involved in the type of well-received, entertaining event a fight against Broner would be.
After what he called a “humbling” year in 2016, Broner isn’t likely to walk away from a Pacquiao fight again, the way he did last year, when he felt he wasn’t offered an acceptable guarantee. He’ll again try to squeeze as much as he can out of Bob Arum, Pacquiao’s promoter, but Broner admits, “My biggest fight right now will probably be a Pacquiao.”
Broner believes he’ll negotiate from a stronger position this time around because Pacquiao’s pay-per-view numbers continue to dwindle.
“You know, I’m a businessman,” Broner said. “I’ve offered what I’ve offered, and then they walk away. And once you come back, you have to meet my requirements now. OK? So let’s say mine’s a little higher now, because I know you need me. Or we could just stay where mine was, and make the fight happen. But Arum knows he’s gotta eat his words and come back around and make this fight happen. Or just keep having duds and keep losing money.”
The “businessman” in Broner should recognize, however, that fighting a Pacquiao pushing 39 would be a reasonable-risk, high-reward proposition. Not to mention Broner would be coming off low-profile fights against Theophane and Granados, and never has headlined a pay-per-view show.
All this Pacquiao-Broner speculation is irrelevant, obviously, if Broner gets upset Saturday night by Granados.
Assuming Broner beats Granados, though, this supposedly more mature Broner should ask Al Haymon to start discussing a Pacquiao pay-per-view fight with Arum almost immediately. And both sides should be reasonable.
After all, it’s obvious Broner and Pacquiao need each other now more than ever.
Keith Idec is a senior writer/columnist for BoxingScene.com. He can be reached on Twitter @Idecboxing.
