Detecting irony may not be a strong suit for those who burn up money for penny clicks, but you get the feeling that even Adrien Broner must?ve snickered to himself at the thought of headlining a card?against journeyman Ashley Theophane?that takes place just a few subway stops away from the Department of Justice. A warrant for his arrest awaits him back home in Ohio on the grounds of felonious assault and aggravated robbery. Nonetheless, Friday?s show ? a three-way sham between About Billions, Headbangerz, and TMT? at the D.C. Armory in Washington, D.C., goes on unperturbed by the commotion with hardly a whisper coming from its organizers regarding the incident. To be fair, though, staying mum has been the greater part of the PBC agenda for some time now.
What is perhaps more troubling, from a boxing perspective, is that Broner, 31-2 (23), is still being propped up as a lead attraction in 2016. It?s a sign, no doubt, that there?s belief among the suits that Broner?s persona ?a lethal mix of brash, lewd, and dangerous? is still potentially bankable. For that reason, Broner isn?t exactly fungible, not when contemporary boxing is home to an unusually bland crop of fighters, both in terms of their styles in the ring and temperaments outside of it. After all, if Floyd Mayweather Jr. could generate windfalls largely on the basis of his personality, it stands to reason that the formula can be replicated. Through a proper combination of opponents (Line up those schlubs!), Broner, the thinking goes, can be put back on the fast track to deliver the sort of performances he once promised in the lower weight classes, tearing up the likes of Gavin Rees and Antonio Demarco.
If ?AB? does what most expect him to do on fight night, and that is dismantle Theophane, the assumption is that he?ll turn himself into the officials of Hamilton County. One can already envision the groundwork being laid for Broner?s next chapter: it will have some sort of redemptive premise. But this just confirms the only option left for boxing?s ungracious stepchild: to court controversy just to stay relevant on Twitter timelines, hip-hop lifestyle blogs, and, most of all, to add significance to where there is none?his performance in the ring. Broner, much like Faust, traded his potential as a top fighter for pop culture immortality, or fifteen minutes of fame. A look at some of his postfight rhetoric tells most of the story.
In his PBC debut last March, Broner turned in a 12-round snoozer against John Molina Jr. After the fight, Broner, alluding to his trouncing by Marcos Maidana in 2013, informed the booing crowd that he would no longer fight for their pleasure. ?Listen to them,? he said in his postfight interview. ?Like always, a lot of them [are] not on my side. But at the end of the day, the last time I fought for the crowd I took my first loss. So no disrespect to anybody, but I had to do what I had to do to win today.?
Several months later, Broner suffered the second loss of his career against Shawn Porter in a cringeworthy 48 minutes that can be described as Porter?s lineman audition for the NFL. After the scores were announced, Broner, with Kenny Rice holding the mic, was on the defensive, telling viewers? the ones he previously dismissed ? that he was ?a real animal,? that he would be open to fighting anybody, and that, most of all, he was still Instagram-worthy in the cyber bubble. For the first time, Broner looked somewhat pensive, as though he couldn?t recall what had just transpired. To his credit, Broner found the loss disturbing enough that for his next fight against Khabib Allakverdiev, he would refrain from speaking to the media in a vow of silence perhaps more appropriate for a Cistercian monk. On fight night, Broner staved off irrelevancy by reworking Khabib Allakhverdiev?s face en route to a 12th-round TKO. His post-fight benediction, however, gave new meaning to the word ?nadir?: ?The next half of my career I?mma be about boxing,? he told Jim Gray. ?I?mma be about business. I?m getting wiser and getting older now. I was too tough. ?Cause I?m from the hood, so, any fight they approached me with I just automatically took ? ain?t no more of that no more?I?m gonna fight who I want to fight when I want to fight them.?
If Broner had said these things back in 1940, when a fighter?s worth directly correlated with their economic drawing power, you can be sure he would?ve been pelted by tomatoes. But these remarks are no less preposterous today, even by our lowered standards. In Broner?s peculiar logic, his streetwise upbringing is proof of his toughness, and, thus, he has no obligation to prove that toughness against a world-class opponent in the ring. When you hear stories of how talented Hollywood directors like Orson Welles and Nicholas Ray got the boot after a box- office flop, you have to consider just how daft boxing really is to give its failed prospects a second, third and even fourth chance. In this light, who has benefited more from the PBC?s lattice of network TV exposure than Broner?
In the end, boxing aficionados, like devotees of any subculture, are intense formalists. They desire only what?s readily observable, testable in the ring. Broner, at this point, fails the reality test, and no amount of extracurricular hype will cover up the fact that he?s been a very boring boxer to watch in recent fights. The strip club stories, the fake feud with Mayweather, and, perhaps, even the assault charge, seem like deliberate ways to hold our attention.
Recently, Broner put up a video of himself in Walmart tossing up his change after a purchase. The image brings to mind what he once told reporters back in 2012 as a young prospect: ?I know what it?s like to wake up in the middle of the night and say, ?I?m hungry,? and see what?s to eat and say, ?Fuck, I got to eat syrup and bread again ? and water. I know what that feels like.?
