Photo by Esther Lin/Showtime
On Saturday, December 14, 2013, live from the Alamodome in San Antonio, TX, Adrien “The Problem” Broner tries to cap off an impressive 2013 with a win over hard-hitting Argentine, Marcos “El Chino” Maidana.
The bout—which is the headlining fight of Golden Boy’s quadruple header on Showtime—is an enticing matchup for fight fans because unlike Paulie Malignaggi, Maidana actually packs a serious punch.
Can Broner take a punch?
It’s the question many of us went into 2013 looking to have answered. Little did we know that it would take almost a full year to get an answer.
We’ve seen Broner take the best from Gavin Rees and Malignaggi, but now we get to get to see what he does if he’s cracked by a power puncher.
Broner is not a boxer in the classic sense. Often times he elects to stay in one place and employ more upper body movement to defend against his opponents attack.
He’s never been visibly hurt, but he has been hit flush numerous times in various fights.
And although he does his best to convince folks that he’s the second coming of “Money Mayweather,” the biggest similarity between the two in the ring is their Philly shell defense–something Broner doesn’t do a great job of using.
It remains to be seen if a stationary style will work against a slugger with underrated boxing ability like Maidana.
In Maidana, we get a tough fighter with an impressive will to compete and win.
Over his career, we’ve seen “Chino” take some hellacious shots from the likes of Victor Ortiz, Amir Khan and Josesito Lopez.
In each of those fights Maidana proved that even if he’s down, you should never count him out.
Maidana seems to always have a trick up his sleeve, which was never more evident then when he burst onto the scene against the then highly regarded up-and-comer, Ortiz.
A win versus Broner would send him into a different stratosphere and set him up for the biggest bouts in boxing.
