“If all I did was boxing,” says Adrien Broner, “then my name wouldn’t be as big as it is today.”
At rest after a training session for his March 7 fight against John Molina Jr., Broner sounds exhausted. In these sorts of situations, it’s always hard to know what an athlete will say or, when they do, whether they mean it. On its face, Broner’s statement sounds a little strange. Broner is no gatekeeper or journeyman; he’s a former WBA light welterweight champion, a 25-year-old fighter whose 29-1 record has put him in position to become one of boxing’s next great fighters. If boxing didn’t make his name, then what did?
It doesn't take more than a quick Google search to find out. Search “Adrien Broner” and the first thing you may notice are the links to TMZ stories, or his Instagram account. Since Broner made his professional debut against Allante Davis in May 2008, this is how casual sports fans have come to know him. They probably missed his victory against Emmanuel Taylor in September of last year, but they remember him flashing cash on FaceTime with Floyd Mayweather Jr., or flushing money down a Popeye’s toilet. Feeling slighted, Broner recently told Jay Z to “suck [his] dick” after the hip-hop mogul offered Broner a five-year/$40 million deal to sign with Roc Nation Sports. He’s since apologized for that incident but, for the most part, Broner has been unrepentant about his outsized personality. Even after a disappointing defeat to Marcos Maidana in December 2013, Broner’s fight to the top has given him little reason to apologize. He’s one of boxing’s biggest personalities—an indispensable quality for any fighter working their way up the ladder.
Whether it was Mike Tyson, Muhammad Ali, or Joe Frazier, a boxer’s mouth has always been as important as his fists in the world of prizefighting. It’s true as far back as the 1920s, when—according to Kasia Boddy, author of Boxing: A Cultural History—members from the American Society of Newspaper Editors declared then-world heavyweight champion Jack Dempsey “the greatest stimulation to circulation in 20 years.” The man powered printing presses. A cultural icon and an American sports hero, Dempsey was immortalized by everything from newspaper ink, to oil paint, to celluloid.
But the state of boxing has changed since Dempsey’s heyday—and even Tyson’s. If you need any indication of how far the sport has fallen since then, of how it’s been relegated to a sort of cult fascination, look no further than the brief takedown Jonathan Mahler wrote for Bloomberg Business in February 2013: “One of the most exciting American boxers in years will defend his title this weekend,” wrote Mahler. “You’ve probably never heard of him.”
He was talking about Broner.
