An Upstart Company Throws a Boatload of Cash at Under-Achieving Adrien Broner

On Thursday, Oct. 20, ESPN’s Mike Coppinger broke the news that David Avanesyan would be Terence Crawford’s next opponent. Five days later, Adrien Broner announced that he would be returning to the ring someday soon against an opponent to be announced.

These were related stories. The common thread is BLK Prime.

A subscription video-on-demand company founded by a Silicon Valley investment group, BLK Prime is headquartered in Hayward, CA. The live-streaming upstart is purportedly paying Terence Crawford $10 million to fight Avanesyan and is purportedly ponying up an additional $10 million to lock in Broner on a three-fight deal.

Assuming the figures are accurate — and numbers tossed out in boxing press releases are routinely inflated – Adrien Broner made out like a bandit. This is a fellow who seemingly wore out of his welcome with PBC/Showtime when he pulled out of his scheduled Aug. 20 match with Omar Figueroa on five days notice citing mental health issues, an explanation widely assumed to be a smokescreen for the fact that he knew he wasn’t going to meet the contracted weight of 140 pounds.

Broner’s claim to fame is that he won world titles in four weight classes – 130, 135, 147, and 140, in that order. However, the men that he conquered to win those titles – Vicente Martin Rodriguez, Antonio DeMarco, Paulie Malignaggi, and Khabib Allakhverdiev – were hardly a murderers’ row. True, Broner has a wealth of talent, but those four title belts say less about him than about an overabundance of weight classes and the balkanization of the sport.

Owing partly to legal problems, Broner has fought only five times in the last six-and-half years. His record in that span is 2-2-1. He defeated Adrian Granados by split decision in a 10-round fight and overcame late sub Jovanie Santiago by unanimous decision in his last engagement. Although the scorecards told a different story, more than a few thought that Santiago, an unheralded Puerto Rican, had edged it. Showtime’s Steve Farhood thought that Santiago had the best of the milling in seven of the 12 rounds.

A pro since 2008, Broner, 33, sports a 34-4-1 (24 KOs) record. His four losses came at the hands of his four toughest opponents, namely Marcos Maidana, Shawn Porter, Mikey Garcia, and Manny Pacquiao. Ergo, despite those four world tile belts, he has yet to win a step-up fight. And although each of those four bouts went the distance, Broner was out-worked in all of them and that’s putting it mildly. Per CompuBox, Broner threw 1451 fewer punches than his opponents in those four fights combined.

“Broner can trash talk with the best. But it has become increasingly clear that he can’t back it up. Against [Shawn] Porter, he didn’t even try to,” wrote Thomas Hauser in a story that ran on these pages under the title “Adrien Broner Punks Out.”

BLK Prime is betting that Broner is still marketable, or at least marketable enough to recoup their expenditure in the form of an expanded customer base. Perhaps so. Having hijacked the bad-boy persona of Floyd Mayweather Jr, and then embellishing it with reckless behavior that makes Floyd look like a monk by comparison, the boxer appropriately nicknamed “The Problem” is one of boxing’s most well-known practitioners. His match with Malignaggi, who was not a big puncher, drew 1.3 million pay-per-view buys, an impressive number for a welterweight fight. But that was nine years ago and we have come to learn a lot more about what to expect from Adrien Broner.

Broner still talks a good fight. He promises fireworks when he returns to the ring.  “I think with my brand, with About Billions, with BLK Prime, we’re gonna take over boxing and reach heights that’s never done before,” he says.

If history is any guide, there will be no fireworks and after Broner collects his purse, he will laugh all the way to the bank or to wherever it is that he parks the money that he hasn’t set aside to squander.

To comment on this story in the Fight Forum CLICK HERE