It was the beginning of the 10th round and his corner had only one simple command: ?Let your hands go!? Still, you had to feel sorry for trainer Michael Stafford, hell, even a little embarrassed. After all, his fighter was Adrien Broner, whose nickname, ?The Problem,? seems more fitting than ever. On Saturday night, in Las Vegas, it was Shawn Porter who would let his hands go, in all their cumbersome fury. Thirty seconds into round 10, Porter would land a clean, straight right on Broner?s chin. Some fighters would take that as an invitation to retaliate. But Broner, stunned, took a step back towards the ropes, and in what was the prevailing motif of the night, proceeded to wrap his arms around Porter. Where were the flurries? The customary sharp jabs and snappy hooks? Even the bolo wind-ups were nowhere to be seen.
Moments later, Broner backed Porter up against the ropes and found the perfect distance from which he could unleash some combinations. The response was a pitiable, half-hearted display that consisted of two jabs, followed by a straight right, and another jab. They all missed the target: Porter?s stationary head. Porter, seemingly surprised by Broner?s timidness, barreled straight into his body with a cluster of punches to the rib. And Broner?s response? Like a good lover, he held Porter tight to his chest. Could it be that Adrien Broner, who once made his name mercilessly whittling down the likes of Gavin Rees and Antonio DeMarco, was now wary of throwing a punch because he didn?t want to get hit in return? To put it another way, has Adrien Broner gone completely gun-shy?
It?s hard to read his performances in any other light. The charge of softness is certainly a damning if rare, accusation for a fighter, an unusually audacious breed to begin with. But Broner is not alone having lost his edge. Recent examples of fighters undergoing a change of heart include Chad Dawson, who, believe it or not, used to throw punches in volume until Glen Johnson roughed him up in their first fight, and Victor Ortiz, who was on the superstar fast-track until Marcos Maidana made him quit on the stool in 2009. With the exception of a back-and-forth decision over Andre Berto in 2011, Ortiz never won another big fight. But if there?s a similar fighter in history who could match Broner for talent and brashness, the prime candidate would have to be Hector ?Macho? Camacho, the Puerto Rican dynamo with blazing hands, irrepressible flair, and a decadent lifestyle to boot. Between his fondness for $8,000 diamond-studded robes and pre-fight pranks, nothing was off-limits for Camacho.
The fun times were cut short, however, when Camacho signed up to fight fellow countryman, Edwin Rosario, on June 13, 1986. Although Camacho would escape with a controversial split decision, he paid the price by being battered and rocked for the first time in his career. For the first time, the savvy puncher found himself in alien territory and quickly took to clinching and running. After the fight, a battered Camacho bluntly told the media in customary third-person: ?Hector Camacho don?t like no damn wars.? Camacho would fight for another 20 years, but he would never look the same. Edwin Rosario had punked the punk.
Clearly, Maidana, channeling Rosario, has delivered a similar blow to Broner, if not to his swagger, then at the very least, to his veneer of invincibility. For a fighter who had been loudly proclaiming the merits of his own destructive powers for a long time, the two knockdowns must have set off a dire alarm in his swollen head: was all this punishment worth the cost of business? An easy comeback win over Carlos Molina may have been a necessary respite, but in his next bout, against limited Emmanuel Taylor, Broner found himself, unexpectedly, in another war, giving and receiving punches, punctuating his effort with a dramatic knockdown in the final round. Other than his brawl with Maidana, this was probably the most entertaining fight Broner has ever had.
But if the Taylor fight was a promise of things to come, Broner made it clear after his desultory win over John Molina Jr., that he would no longer be taking risks. ?Listen to [the fans],? he said in his post-fight interview. ? Like always, a lot of them 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.? His comments weren?t a fluke. They stayed true in closed quarters. The night before Lamont Peterson fought Danny Garcia at the Barclays Center, Broner came over to his buddy?s hotel room and offered some words of encouragement. ?Make it easy,? he told the D.C. native. And then he added casually: ?Fuck the crowd.?
Against Porter, the kind of one-dimensional pug that a skilled counterpuncher should pick apart, Broner took to holding his opponent most of the night, and most assuredly earned himself a place in the Octagon, should he ever need a side gig. Shades of Maidana, even Taylor, now seem to muddle Broner?s once fearsome instincts. But the talk continued. ?Listen, man, I still want to fight anybody,? he told Kenny Rice just moments after the decision against him was announced. ?It don?t matter, man. I am a real animal. I?m a real animal. I came to fight today. I didn?t get the decision, but I?m okay. At the end of the day, everybody will take my autograph and take my picture.?
Broner might be some kind of animal, but he is being run down the divisional food chain. Then again, maybe Broner, only 25, does have a point. So long as he stays active on Twitter and fuels World Star and TMZ with a steady stream of DUIs, sex tapes and strip-club antics, he?ll stay relevant, the way Amanda Bynes and Lindsay Lohan do. When Hector Camacho told an interviewer that he thought Rosario might have ?made a pussy out of me,? it was as candid as a prizefighter could get. One wonders if Broner will ever reach that sort of clarity.
