by David P. Greisman

For years Adrien Broner’s interviews have been an opportunity for him to utter lines and jokes that were rehearsed and would then be rehashed. They were an extension of his exhibitionism, a platform for a playful personality, a manner of making those who already loved him smile and nod while those who already hated him grimaced and shook their heads. He excited and incited.

Part of that shtick involved turning his initials into abbreviations. He was always ballin’ and about billions. His opponents got ass beatings. But before his most recent fight that got toned down. He was about boxing, he said, and about business.

That was on the rare occasion when he spoke publicly before his fight this past Saturday against Khabib Allakhverdiev — talking to Showtime contributor Mark Kriegel in front of the network’s cameras for its YouTube channel ahead of a bout it was broadcasting, and then with in-house reporter Jim Gray in a locker room interview on the night of the fight.

“One reason I didn’t do any interviews is because I had nothing to say,” Broner told Kriegel. “All I got to do is prove what I do inside the ring — that I can be the four-time world champion in four different weight classes, that I am going to be the four-time world champion in four different weight classes.”

This wasn’t isolation meant for concentration and motivation, however. In reality, it was a petulant reaction to an article written by notable boxing writer Dan Rafael on the ESPN website. Rafael had criticized Broner vs. Allakhverdiev being for a vacant world title when that belt, in his opinion, rightly should’ve been awarded to another boxer. Broner took it personally.

“Shut yo bitch ass up trying to slander a Mf and talk bad about a fight when you never fought a day in your life,” Broner tweeted in late August. “How about boxers start fightN u tough ass reporters [and] c if anybody will take a L [a loss]. U computer gangsters make me sick.”

“For all you reporters the new AB don’t do interviews so if you see any press release comments just know that ain’t me saying that sh*t!” he soon added. “I will only talk after my fight from here on out. No more press conferences No NOTHING!!!!”

While he did tweet on occasion for the next month, there was very little else said to the media beyond interviews with boxing website FightHype.com. Yet there apparently had been a change in camp. While some boxers lose fights, promise to improve themselves and turn out to be all talk and no action, Broner was reportedly no talk and more action.

“He’s not gambling. He’s not hanging out. He’s not going partying. He’s not making the personal appearances like he would before,” said Broner’s trainer, Mike Stafford, in an early September interview with FightHype. “That kinda took away from his training. If you stay up late, it’s hard to get up. He’s up every day at 8 o’clock, hitting the hills at 9 o’clock, coming back home and resting, [and] in the gym at 4:30.”

Stafford said Broner’s past behavior wasn’t the reason he’d lost fights against Marcos Maidana in late 2013 and Shawn Porter this past June. Rather, the trainer believed his fighter had just come out too slow and gotten going too late. Broner didn’t delve too deep into why he lost to Porter, but in conversations both before and after the Allakhverdiev fight he acknowledged that he could only blame himself.

“That wasn’t the full Adrien Broner,” he told Kriegel about the Porter fight. “Only I know that I beat myself that night. I can assure you it won’t happen again.”

“I always work hard. Always. It’s just I’m at a point in my career where it’s like you got to do more than just work hard,” he told reporters shortly after he scored a 12th-round technical knockout over Allakhverdiev. “And that’s what I learned from Floyd [Mayweather Jr.]. We talk a lot. He taught me a few things. That’s one of the things that I really took from him. It’s not just about working hard. It’s about outside the ring also. … It’s really up to me. As long as I’m focused and I’m all about boxing and business, nobody’s going to beat Adrien Broner. I’m the same Adrien Broner, I’m just more mature, more serious about my craft. It’s not a game.”

The loss to Maidana should’ve been enough of a reality check.

Broner had taunted his opponent beforehand and then again during the fight, spinning Maidana around in the first round and thrusting his hips into Maidana’s backside. He was so busy paying attention to Maidana’s ass that he forgot to watch his own. One round later, Maidana landed a left hook and knocked Broner down. Broner was put on the mat again in the eighth. He fought with guts that night but was outgunned. Maidana won. Broner suffered his first pro defeat and lost out on the potential of headlining pay-per-views in 2014. Fans in attendance at the Alamodome in San Antonio, Texas, threw cups of beer and other items at him as he walked back to the locker room.

“Everybody is looking for Adrien Broner to be this new humble guy. Well, if you're looking for Adrien Broner to be this new humble guy, you won't get it,” Broner said months later, ahead of his first fight after the loss. “I'm still the same fresh, flashy, young, rich and famous guy.”

In reality, Broner’s bad habits had gotten the best of him and he’d come out the worse for it. When he’d fought at 130 and 135 pounds he’d been fast and powerful, gaining enough weight between weigh-ins and fight night that he could employ advantages in height and size and do so without losing speed. Big fights weren’t available for him in those divisions, though, and many of the top names at 140 also weren’t available, so he’d jumped up to 147, challenged Paulie Malignaggi, won a decision and earned a world title in a third weight class.

But he’d become enamored with the lifestyle that boxing had afforded him while losing sight of some of what had gotten him that luxury. He partied. He got arrested, though run-ins with the law had plagued him for years. He blew up in weight between fights and then rushed to get back down to the limit. His reflexes were slower than he thought. He got hit with Maidana’s left hand while moving straight back and trying to pull his chin out of harm’s way.

Even training camp might not have helped as much as it should’ve. Chris Mannix of Sports Illustrated recalled last week what he’d witnessed while watching Broner prepare for Maidana.

“Training was paused for Broner to watch DVDs of his knockouts playing on a screen above the ring,” Mannix wrote. “For most fighters, sparring is regimented. Several fresh fighters alternate in and out over three- or four-minute rounds in order to maximize its effectiveness. Broner’s was different. Before the Maidana fight, Broner sparred with Hank Lundy. The sessions were two 18-minute rounds that were less a test of skills than a war of attrition. Broner and Lundy hurled insults at each other and sharp sparring quickly, and predictably, devolved into a sloppy wrestling match that did little to prepare Broner for the pressure Maidana would apply weeks later.”

It’s hard to know whether what was seen one day reflected the tenor and tenacity of the rest of training camp. Stafford, for his part, didn’t think the weight had anything to do with the loss. “He just got caught with a good shot, that’s all,” the trainer told me a month and a half after the Maidana fight. “I mean, if you saw him in the later rounds, he didn’t look slow. He just got caught. It took time to get himself back together, that’s all it was.”

But Broner’s next three fights would be down at junior welterweight anyway. Broner was more natural for 140, Stafford said. He came back from the Maidana loss by winning three straight against lower-level opponents Carlos Molina, Emmanuel Taylor and John Molina. And then, once again with nothing bigger on the horizon in his division, Broner stepped up to welterweight to take on Porter.

His team protected its fighter this time, insisting on a 144-pound catchweight, likely believing that dropping those few extra pounds would hurt the compact Porter and take away advantages he might have otherwise enjoyed in the ring. Porter made weight fine and without harming his own chances of winning. Broner hurt himself instead with a lack of activity; CompuBox credited him with throwing just 309 punches over the course of 12 rounds, only twice sending out more than 30 punches in the span of three minutes. Broner scored a knockdown in the 12th, but it was nowhere near enough. He lost for the second time, this time on national television.

“I came to fight today and I didn’t get the decision,” he said immediately afterward, overstating the first part of his sentence and understating the second. “But at the end of the day, everyone here will take my autograph and my picture.”

That’s less likely to happen when a boxer continues to lose in his biggest fights. This bout with Allakhverdiev, then, was the beginning of what may be Broner’s last chance to rebuild.

He arrived at the weigh-in in very good shape, coming in at 138.5 pounds, easily within the 140-pound limit. He still started slowly and took sections of rounds off, getting hit with punches by an admittedly determined opponent that Broner might not have been able to shake off as easily were they coming from someone else.

Broner was able to land leads and counters while standing in front of Allakhverdiev. He threw punches far more frequently than he had against Porter and began to find even more success as the fight went on. His power shots hit Allakhverdiev with punishing accuracy, landing about half the time, including 33 out of 66 in the 11th round. Broner opened up with another combination in the final minute of the 12th and the referee jumped in, a stoppage that seemed premature but otherwise had no bearing on the eventual result. All three judges had him comfortably ahead and Allakhverdiev did not appear to have a chance to knock Broner out with what little time was left.

It was a good win, though for the third time Broner picked up a world title by beating someone who wasn’t among the top fighters in the division. Those who already loved him will smile and nod, while those who already hate him will grimace and shake their heads.

“It don’t hurt me that a lot of people want to see me lose, because there’s also a lot of people that want to see me win, too,” he had told Kriegel before the fight. “I knew that. With me being myself, I was going to get a lot of people who like me and a lot of people who didn’t like me.

“It’s crazy that they stereotype me to be a bad guy, because I’m not a bad guy,” he added. “I’d give up my last if I had to. I’d help anybody firsthand if I could. I don’t see how you can call me a bad guy because I’m outspoken, I speak my mind, and I don’t do what you probably want me to do. I do what I want to do and the way I want to do it. I probably come off to be an arrogant, cocky little guy, but if someone really took the time and really hung out with Adrien Broner, they’d love Adrien Broner the rest of their life.”

But Broner has played into the stereotype to help market himself as an antihero and a villain, trying to mimic the way Floyd Mayweather Jr. had marketed himself into a mega-millionaire. Broner is the person who put himself out there with videos of him sitting on a toilet and flushing money down, who allowed himself to be filmed performing a sex act with an adult entertainer in a club, who talks trash knowing exactly how it will be received. Those I’ve spoken to who know Broner in quiet, private settings say there is another side to him. It’s hard for people to know that side of Broner if it’s not what he chooses to present.

He may be trying to do better for himself by being “about boxing” and “about business,” all while there could be a tangential benefit in which toning down his antics might perhaps help win additional fans over. But those who were rubbed the wrong way before will again be agitated by the other manner in which Broner is being “about business.”

The same fighter who earned millions of dollars against a slew of lesser opponents and won three of those world titles by picking low-hanging fruit spent part of his post-fight interview this past Saturday calling out Ashley Theophane, a British boxer who is under Floyd Mayweather Jr.’s Mayweather Promotions banner.

Theophane is 35 years old, is 39-6-1 with 11 knockouts, and is not presently rated in the Top 15 of any of the four major sanctioning bodies, which is a surprisingly difficult task to achieve given some of the boxers who wind up in the rankings. It shouldn’t be surprising if that changes when the organizations update their rankings for October; Theophane fought on Sept. 12, outpointing Steve Upsher Chambers, who also wasn’t ranked within anyone’s Top 15.

“I’m going to do what’s best for Adrien Broner. There’s no more trying to impress the fans. No more,” Broner told reporters after beating Allakhverdiev. “I’m going to do what’s best for me, because when it’s all said and done there won’t be one fan that’s going to pay my bill.”

In the ring immediately after the win, he’d called himself too tough and said he’d automatically taken any fight he was offered in the past. While it’s true that Broner need not have been willing to go beyond 140 and faced Maidana and Porter, this statement made it sound like he didn’t care to take on a challenge unless it truly was worth it.

“I was young. I was too tough. But I’m older. I’m wiser,” Broner said a bit later. “It’s time to make decisions for me. It took me some time, but now it’s just about doing what I got to do to get my victory and staying safe and leaving out that ring as pretty as possible.”

That’s a business decision that won’t win fans over. Broner doesn’t need to worry as much about that so long as he continues to receive sizable paychecks from appearing on Showtime or on the “Premier Boxing Champions” broadcasts run by his adviser, Al Haymon. There may be bigger fights in the future, but Haymon and every boxing promoter and manager will seek to have his or her boxers in less difficult fights until it’s time to risk their investment (or investments) in a more even matchup.

The final question aired in Kriegel’s interview with Broner had the fighter being asked how he wants to be remembered.

“As one of the best boxers to ever lace up a boxing glove, one of the most entertaining boxers to ever enter the ring,” he responded.

For someone who spoke very little in the lead-up to this fight, and who said afterward that he doesn’t care about impressing the fans, those words are meaningless for now. Broner had admitted it himself earlier. It’s not about what he says, but rather about what he does.

The 10 Count will return soon.

“Fighting Words” appears every Monday on BoxingScene.com. Pick up a copy of David’s book, “Fighting Words: The Heart and Heartbreak of Boxing,” at http://bit.ly/fightingwordsamazon or internationally at http://bit.ly/fightingwordsworldwide . Send questions/comments via email at fightingwords1@gmail.com