By Rick Reeno
It's no industry secret that Floyd Mayweather Jr. and Adrien Broner are close friends.
Mayweather's promotional company is running Saturday's Premier Boxing Champions card, where Broner (30-1, 22 KOs) will face Shawn Porter (25-1-1, 16 KOs) in an NBC televised headliner.
Porter is certainly Broner's toughest opponent since Marcos Maidana, who handed Broner his first career defeat in December 2013.
To fully ensure that Broner stays focused, and properly trains, Mayweather directed him to move his training camp to the Mayweather Boxing Club in Las Vegas. Broner is accustomed to training in his hometown of Cincinnati, where there are many distractions for the young fighter.
"That's why I play a major key. Normally his training camp is in Cincinnati where there is a lot of distractions. What happened? I got on the phone with him and [told him to] get here where there is no distractions. And he is still going to make a lot of mistakes, cause he's young. And I made a lot of mistakes, but I didn't have a mentor like a Floyd Mayweather to communicate and tell me right from wrong," Mayweather said.
"I think he still has to learn. When Leonard Ellerbe is on the podium, he has to realize that he can't just praise him. In the promotion world, we have to be on an even playing field. Just like the Pacquiao fight, I just wanted to be on an even playing field. This guy Shawn Porter, he's been a world champion before. We can't just talk [about Broner]. [Porter] only has one loss and Adrien Broner has one loss."