Adrien Broner lost his WBA welterweight title and credibility as a marquee fighter to the relentless, hard-hitting Marcos ?El Chino? Maidana?
SAN ANTONIO?Saturday night at the Alamodome in San Antonio, Texas, Adrien ?The Problem? Broner (27-1, 22 KOs), from Cincinnati, Ohio, lost his WBA welterweight title and credibility as a marquee fighter to the relentless, hard-hitting Marcos ?El Chino? Maidana (35-3, 31 KOs), from Buenos Aires, Argentina, by scores of 115-110, 116-109, and 117-109.
A partisan crowd of 11,312, the majority of whom were hoping to see The Problem get whupped, got exactly what they came for, as Broner got his ass kicked but good by the Kayo King of the Pampas.
Fighting out of the blue corner in black trunks with sparkly red and gold trim, the problems started early for Broner. I?m not alluding to the problems of the boxing prodigy who was feted, indulged and sanctified when he was a little boy, who morphed into the manchild we know today. The problems began when Broner appeared on the big screens in the Alamodome and the crowd rose to its feet to boo in unison.
Broner feeds off the animosity he has created. The animosity has nothing to do with race, however convenient the subject of race may be. It has everything to do with class and/or taste and the alarming lack thereof. Broner regards catcalls the same way an ornithologist regards birdsong. It?s music to his ears and proof, as if any proof were needed, that he is Mother Nature?s son and on the right path.
Maidana, fighting out of the red corner in red trunks with black trim, has a less complicated persona to comtend with. He is under no illusion that he is the Chosen One. He is a fighter, he comes to fight, and he comes to win, and fizzy personalities and endless boasting means no more to him than an annoying mosquito or squeaky door.
At the opening bell, Maidana took the fight to his opponent. Whether he was expressing dislike or testing Broner?s resolve is impossible to know. El Chino was aggressive, perhaps to a fault, expending energy with little to show for it. But Maidana, at the very least, established that the games that preceded the fight were over, and it was time for the real game, the fight game, to begin.
The implication that Broner was in for a long night hardened into fact in round two. Maidana, the formerly one-handed fighter, landed a crushing left that dropped the Cincinnati Kid hard. On his back, tangled in the ropes, with the Alamodome swirling around his head, Broner was was hurt and hurt bad. He got to his feet on wobbly legs and proceeded to get nailed repeatedly. His nose was bleeding. There was blood around his lips. His mouth was wide open. He looked as if he was in shock. The referee, Laurence Cole, who reputation preceded him, saved Broner with some incompetent officiating. But it was a 10-7 round. Broner survived but just barely.
Maidana was in control of the fight. Picking his spots, varying his attack upstairs and down, he had Broner in survival mode in rounds three and four. Broner showed flashes of his old brilliance, but they were a flash in the pan and never enough to deter Maidana. Chants of ?A.B., A.B., A.B.,? perhaps soothing to Broner?s fans, were drowned out by chants of ?Chino, Chino, Chino.? Broner may have won one of the two rounds, depending on one?s mood, one?s relation to reality, and one?s connection to the Christmas spirit.
Broner resorted to holding and hitting in round five. Maidana was putting on a body punching clinic. Broner?s signature shoulder roll, an asset at the best of times, proved irrelevant in the worst of times. Referee Cole twice warned Broner for pushing off, in the belief that if he continued a point would be deducted. Maidana, meanwhile, continued to do what he had done since the opening bell, which was to impose his will on his increasingly vulnerable opponent.
By the middle rounds it was all Maidana all the time. In each and every category?jabs thrown, combinations landed, meaningful shots to the body and head?El Chino was bettering Broner. Occasionally Broner did just enough to keep Maidana off him, but more often than not Maidana was on him, firing away, tearing Broner apart, breaking Broner down, piece by ever-loving piece.
Maidana dropped Broner again in the eighth round. Again he beat the count, but this time he was holding on for dear life. Maidana, either because he smelled blood or was annoyed at all the clinching, intentionally head-butted Broner, who histrionically dropped to the canvas a third time. It was a serious miscalculation that cost him an early stoppage and a point. Broner took the allotted five minutes to recover, while jawboning complaints to whoever would listen, but it no longer mattered because we were watching a beaten man who was about to be beaten further.
More pain was inflicted by Maidana in round nine. Broner was wobbled and retreated to the ropes with El Chino in hot pursuit. Broner could run, but he could not hide, either from Maidana or his inadequacies as a prizefighter.
The championship rounds went to Maidana. He was busier. He was more accurate. He was in total control. Broner landed a desperation shot after the bell in round 11, but Laurence Cole, for reasons known only to him, decided to let it slide. Maidana finished the 12th and final round in fine style, by punching Broner as he slid along the ropes, just as he slid from his top 20 ranking.
Broner climbed a turnbuckle at the end of the fight and raised his arms in victory, either out of habit or prompted by some scrambled motor reflex. But he had lost the fight and by a large margin and everyone but Broner seemed to know it.
Amid the jubilation in the Alamodome, there was also a tinge of sadness. Broner had proven tougher than anyone knew or expected. But he had suffered a colossal fall from grace. When the final scores were announced and it sank in that he had lost the fight and his stature in the world, Broner panicked and fled the ring before the post-fight interview. Watching him take flight, his head covered, tears in his eyes, the jeers of the crowd ringing in his ears, while being pelted with plastic water bottles, was poetic justice of a sort. Hubris got its comeuppance, but this was a tragedy writ large, whether Adrien Broner deserved it or not.
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