by Ryan Maquiñana
Newly crowned welterweight interim titleholder Robert Guerrero commented on his recent war of words on Twitter with lightweight Adrien Broner.
“You get guys like Adrien Broner and other fighters wanting to challenge guys, but they want to bring them down to a catchweight.” Guerrero told Comcast SportsNet Bay Area in a video interview. “I’m not about that, calling out guys and trying to bring them down in weight, and meet at catchweights, and this and that.
“You got to man up, pretty much. You got to man up. Fight the fights that are right there in front of you, and you know what, if you throw out the challenge, you’re going to go to the challenge. You’re not going to try to bring the challenge to you.”
Guerrero distinguished a potential matchup with Broner from his close friend Andre Ward’s upcoming Saturday battle with light heavyweight Chad Dawson for the unified 168-pound title.
“The difference is that Chad called out Andre,” he stated later off-camera. “He’s the one who challenged [Ward] at Andre’s weight, so Andre just accepted the challenge and that’s where they’re fighting.”
With his unanimous decision victory over Selcuk Aydin in July, Guerrero became the mandatory challenger to Floyd Mayweather, who has not defended the belt since his stoppage of Victor Ortiz last September.
After winning a vacant belt at junior lightweight, Broner has moved up to 135 pounds following a stoppage win over Vicente Escobedo.
Ryan Maquiñana is the boxing producer for NBCOlympics.com and writes a weekly boxing column for CSNBayArea.com. He is a full member of the Boxing Writers Association of America and the Ratings Panel for Ring Magazine. E-mail him at rmaquinana@gmail.com, check out his blog at Norcalboxing.net, or follow him on Twitter: @RMaq28.
