What's Next For Adrien Broner After Loss To Mikey Garcia?

By Corey Erdman

The great irony of Adrien Broner is that as transparent as he's been throughout his career, a lot of his popularity has been rooted in illusion.

No fighter in the world has allowed fans into their personal life over the years quite like Broner has. Even in a day and age in which there are a handful of reporters at every major gym recording everything at all times, you still feel like you know Broner the best. His “About Billions” online reality show opened the floodgates and allowed everyone to see how he lives day to day. Every legal issue, every criminal offense, every juvenile mishap has been accounted for and documented.

But you'll notice, most of what Broner allows you to see is about him, the person. Even in his own self-produced material, footage of him in the ring training is scarce. You'll see him hitting the mitts in flashy sequences, digging hooks into the heavybag, but seldom actual sparring footage. It illustrates the athletic gifts Broner has without putting the puzzle together for everyone.

On Saturday night, Broner suffered his third career loss, dropping a unanimous decision to Mikey Garcia at Barclay's Centre in Brooklyn. Much like in his other two losses—and even some of his wins—Broner's greatness in the ring was a mirage.

Garcia outworked and outclassed Broner from start to finish, who only really seemed to get going in the final four rounds of the fight. It's been a common theme in Broner fights ever since he moved up from 135 pounds. The Cincinnati native starts slow, then rallies at the end. Against B-level fighters, it's been enough to usually rally from behind on the scorecards. Against better fighters, such as Garcia, Shawn Porter and Marcos Maidana, it hasn't even been close.

In that regard, Broner is a lot like a middle distance runner who prefers to sit in the chase pack before dropping the hammer on the final lap, except his kick either isn't good enough, or just comes too late.

There are a lot of theories as to why Broner isn't better than he is. Common ones are that he doesn't live a spartan lifestyle, and as such isn't in the best condition he could be, or that he isn't as focused as his opponent. Others suggest he believes too much in his own power, and spends too much time waiting and looking for a perfect shot.

“It was Tom and Jerry,” Broner said after the fight. “I had to catch the mouse.”

This quote illustrates another common theory about Broner's supposed underachievement—perhaps he really thinks he's doing more in the ring than he actually is. In this case, either he completely misunderstands the cat and mouse metaphor, or he didn't notice that Garcia was either right in front of him, or backing him up for the vast majority of the fight. When you watch Broner fight and shake his head “no” repeatedly after his opponent's flurries, one can conclude that he either believes they aren't landing at all, or that they're inconsequential.

As the scorecards revealed in this fight, neither of those things were true.

Perhaps the reason we try so hard to understand and explain Broner's shortcomings is because of what it would say about us as fans, and about the boxing industry, if he actually turned out to just not be that good. It would mean that we have been fooled, maybe moreso than by any other fighter in recent memory.

The fact is, Broner is a television ratings monster in the context of boxing. Broner was a part of the highest rated telecast of 2015, defeating John Molina on the Premier Boxing Champions debut. Last year, he drew a record rating on Spike in his win over Ashley Theophane, a fight with monstrously wide odds whose promotion rested solely on his shoulders. In his last outing against Adrian Granados, he registered the highest rating Showtime had seen since the 2015 heavyweight title fight between Deontay Wilder and Bermane Stiverne.

When Broner fights, it's a trending topic on Twitter, it makes the sports pages and is even discussed on the biggest hip hop radio shows in the world. Heck, even the biggest acts in hip hop walk to the ring with him. There is a cultural cache about Broner that doesn't exist with most other fighters in North America not named Mayweather, Pacquiao or Canelo.

It's true that Broner's bombastic heelish persona brings about plenty of people who tune in just to see if he loses, but even those people wouldn't tune in if they thought he was a terrible boxer. And he's certainly not. In fact, when it comes to championship titles and money earned, he's one of the most successful fighters of this era.

But he didn't become the next great fighter that many thought he would be. Were those people wrong all along? Was it just never in Broner to begin with? Or did he mess it up somewhere along the way?

It seems odd to write a human being off at 28 years of age, but in boxing, that's not necessarily absurd. While they have been plenty of instances of fighters taking losses and improving as the years went on, the majority of those cases come from a time when fighters fought more often and against tougher opposition—making both losses and marked improvement easier to come by.

After the Garcia wipeout, it no longer seems like speculation when concluding how good Broner is right now. It's tough to argue that he wasn't at the optimal weight, or it was just a bad night anymore. He just seems to be a bit below the best in the world.

In the hallways of the Barclays Center, Broner told reporters that he would be world champion again one day.

That may be the case. But now that the fans have put the Broner puzzle together, is there anything left to tune in for?