In his previous bout with Paulie Malignaggi, Broner struggled to make any dent with his punches on the back of scoring a series of knockout victories as he secured world titles from 130-135.
The only ingredient missing to fully expose Broner’s lack of clout at 147 was a hard-punching, come-forward fighter, and that’s where Marcos Maidana came in tonight at the Alamodome in Texas.
From the very first round, the Argentinian put intense pressure on Broner and had ‘The Problem’ in problems of his own when the Cincinnati-native tasted the canvas in the second session.
Broner was badly shaken on that occasion and rose on unsteady legs, as the determined Maidana continued to pour on the punches to take the first four rounds quite convincingly.
Rounds five and six where better rounds for Broner, although he was still taking punches and the fight was in danger of turning sour as both jostled inside using their forearms frequently in each others faces.
Maidana began to look tired around the seventh round but still managed to tee-off with the better punches, before a double left hand salvo had a baffled Broner on the floor again in the eighth round.
Later that round, as Broner attempted to clinch and grabbed both of Maidana’s arms, ‘Chino’ retaliated with a blatant headbutt and was rightly docked a point by referee Laurence Cole to cancel out the knockdown.
Some uncalled for play-acting from Broner immediate after the butt was in poor taste and may have contributed to Cole’s decision to ensure Maidana only took the round by a point instead of two.
Not wanting to take anymore huge shots clean, Broner got on his bike for the next three rounds, until being told be his corner to go for it in the last round, which brought a little more success.
In the end Maidana was a worthy winner and showed that Broner’s leap from 135 to 147 was maybe a couple of years premature, with the judges coming back with cards of 117-109, 116-109 and 115-110 to see the WBA title change hands.
It has to be a must that Broner now goes back to lightweight to defend the WBC belt he still possesses at the weight, or at the very least head down to 140, as calls for him to be the next Floyd Mayweather get dropped harder than he did on those two occasions in the fight.
Follow on Twitter @PhilDJay for tweets of upcoming news on WBN
