Adrien Broner Is Entertaining, Just Not In The RIng

After 25 months out of the ring, the former four-division world champion Adrien Broner was in action Saturday night and won a unanimous decision victory over the undefeated Jovanie Santiago on the Showtime broadcast from “The Fightshere” at the Mohegan Sun Casino.

This section is the part typically where I’d tell you throughout what went down for twelve rounds in the ring. However, everyone watching it can tell you that we saw the same version of Broner for thirty-six minutes that many saw against Manny Pacquiao in his last outing. The slight difference this time was Broner was able to string a few punches in the later rounds to win on the scorecards that honestly didn’t do Santiago any justice. I’ll get to that later but let me say this before going any further.

Broner is entertaining, just not in the ring.

The first round of this fight had Broner per Showtime Stats (with Compubox) show that Broner land 0 punches in the first round. That may be inaccurate but despite that and Santiago landing what they counted three, two out of the three judges gave Broner the round in which both honestly on a ten-point must system earned a zero for both.

During the broadcast, blow-by-blow man Mauro Ranallo was constantly, and I mean constantly throwing shots at the lack of output Broner had through the six rounds of this fight. Rightfully so as Broner landed just 35 of 138 punches in the opening six rounds of the fight. No matter how you slice it, he wasn’t throwing at all and this was on pace for Robert Easter Jr.-Rances Barthelemy territory. Despite that, Broner was landing more accurate shots in the second half of this fight for the decision, with scorecards of 116-111, 117-110, and 115-112 all in favor of him.

The fight cards didn’t reflect the ring’s action, nor the result of wide scores, and analyst Al Bernstein who was ringside for the fight, tweeted as much this morning.

For the record. I did not score round by round the Broner-Santiago fight, but my feeling is it was a very close fight. I would lean to Santiago winning by a point as @SteveFarhood had it. It’s possible for a Bronwr to get a razor thin nod but certainly not by margin judges had.

— Al Bernstein (@AlBernstein) February 21, 2021

But let’s be honest, we expected most if not all of this in the ring from Broner. We’re here for the AB after the bell, and that got him trending late night on Twitter on the same night, which saw arguably the best Knockout of the Year in the ring to date with Oscar Valdez stopping Miguel Berchelt.

What got him there?

“I only had $13 coming into the fight, but we flip that to $13 mil, so for the weekend, we are popping bottles and having sex. So a lot of things are going to change,” Broner speaking with Brian Custer after the fight will do that every time.

Broner also doubled down with those who thought he didn’t win the fight (me included) along with the 52% of the poll taken by those watching Showtime last night with the following:

“F*ck Twitter and F*ck Steve Farhood,” Broner said to those who fought he didn’t win.

I’m sorry but that’s funny. Steve Farhood gets dragged into this as his unofficial scorecard for the broadcast had it 115-114 for Santiago winning the fight. That is why we are here for the return of Broner.

Look, this fight which most of the boxing world knew nothing about Santiago and was expected to be added to Broner’s highlight reel, didn’t happen cause Broner in the ring was rusty, only legitimately looked active in the second half of the fight, and really did nothing of note against a man that made this look like a sparring session for the fight. Win, lose or draw, we know Broner will say something that we will, in my case, write or definitely talk about it.

“That was cool. I want to go home and really look at my fight. I haven’t fought in two years. But I felt good. I felt like I won the fight. I felt like I beat him with the jab, honestly. But it felt good to get my hand raised, though,” Broner said about his performance.

I’m not here for Broner going to look at the tape and make ring adjustments. I’m here for the Broner that compared his experience inside the bubble to his feeling like “he was back in jail again cause he couldn’t do anything.”

That is the version of Broner I’m here for. I don’t care if it’s at bridgerweight, which sounded like a possibility as he had to lose 35 pounds to get back in shape to fight at 147 for this contest. Don’t give me fantasy matchups of whose next cause if it’s a household name based on this version of Broner we saw last night; he loses to any of them in the ring.

Outside of the ring is where Broner is entertaining. Let’s see how long that ride goes this time around, and at the end of the day, Broner is 1-0 in the ring in 2021 and out of it so far.