SAN ANTONIO – In the weeks to come, it will likely be discovered Adrien Broner suffered from a fatal strain of the deadlywhatever virus in his training camp, did his ringwalk with a right hand broken on the pads in his dressing room, crushed all five of his left knuckles in the first round, suffered invisible lacerations over both eyes in the fourth, and talked through a jaw shattered during round 8. Believe little of it.
Adrien Broner proved merely that he was a fighter in losing to Marcos Maidana at Alamodome on Saturday, a fighter not quite special as Amir Khan – so adjust the seriousness of your reactions accordingly.
If you are reading this column the sensation you have right now, the one you’ve been enjoying for at least 30 hours, is schadenfreude, the pleasure one experiences at another’s misfortune, so perfectly captured in German that English lexicographers decided merely to employ the 19th century’s equivalent of copy+paste. The schadenfreude felt by so many about Broner’s misfortune is evidence not just of “The Problem’s” increasingly odious public persona, a sort of gallivanting idiot defined by the aggrandizement other idiots bestowed on him, but also the lingering suspicion, now confirmed, Broner was two parts media creation for each part talent.
He has reflexes, power, accuracy and considerable upper-body strength, which is another way of calling Broner a great athlete but not a great prizefighter for a number of reasons but chiefly this: He does not have a ring IQ like the great ones, and he is not able to make adjustments like them either. Broner is an imitator, not one who innovates, and not a particularly able one, either – as Broner’s inspiration, Floyd Mayweather Jr., and Mayweather Jr.’s mentor, Floyd Mayweather Sr., must have cringed each of the dozens of times plodding Marcos Maidana touched their self-anointed protégé with left-hook leads, a punch with which Maidana might fell Mayweather once every 10 years, starting in about 10 years.
The genuine misfortune experienced Saturday by Adrien “The Problem” Broner, field commander of “Band Camp,” self-vender “about billions,” brought genuine pleasure to a large number of South Texans, too, men who favor fighters of Mexican origin first, fighters of Latino origin second, and fighters who humble loudmouthed American upstarts always. “El Chino,” so named because of the shape of his eyes more than any genealogical rigor shown by fellow Argentines, was an adopted South Texan for every second of what 36 minutes he battered Broner, largely because he began battering Broner in the fight’s very first seconds and didn’t relent doing so.
Maidana fought Broner exactly the way folks hoped he would, exactly the way noncombatants imagine they would do it if given just 30 seconds with Broner, punching “The Problem” constantly, fouling him whenever he could get away with it, slugging with him like he hated him because he did hate him. The shtick Broner was taught to use in his relentless self-promotion is foreign to a man like Maidana in a way ethnic sensibilities cannot anticipate. The Argentine watched Broner’s crass presentation with about one third the humor Joe Frazier showed Muhammad Ali’s creation of the act, and like Frazier, Maidana proved himself a man possessed of a unique sort of fighting style that does not suffer if marinated in spite.
Maidana was a smarter fighter than Broner prepared for, too. So often when Broner began a rally of any kind, needing two seconds of Maidana inactivity to trigger an assault, Maidana jabbed his gut or head, or rushed him, arms flailing, and kept punching till either a telling blow landed or Broner pushed him off – and no, it was not lost on nearly anyone in Alamodome how much of Broner’s defense, and offense, relied on extending his forearms more than his fists, in one more awkward homage to Mayweather.
Maidana is not a true welterweight, his best days came at 140 pounds, but he is still the hardest-punching and strongest man Broner has faced, the first opponent Broner was unable to impose his physicality upon, though he did try. What few moments Broner succeeded against Maidana came when “The Problem” stomped forward and caused Maidana to move backwards. But there again, Maidana was wilier than scouting reports predicted; “El Chino” often took steps backwards voluntarily, and then followed them with jabs to Broner’s body or left-hook leads to his head, punches Maidana himself probably didn’t think would land, certainly not so flush, but threw more to coil and cock the clubbing overhand right with which he merrily continued to strike the back of Broner’s inanely placed head.
Then there was the well-placed and reciprocal 11th-round humping Maidana gave Broner’s backside, clowning the clown in a way reminiscent of Marco Antonio Barrera’s spiteful driving of a half-nelsoned Naseem Hamed’s face in a turnbuckle after undressing “The Prince” for 34 minutes in 2001. Difference was, much as Barrera disdained Hamed, the Mexican had to content himself with simply outclassing the media creation across from him; Maidana experienced no such lukewarmness of satisfaction, walloping Broner thoroughly as he did, thrusting the top of his head in Broner’s face like a spear in the eighth, hitting him on the break and watching Broner flop on the blue canvas like a third-rate thespian, or a Bernard Hopkins, in the hopes referee Laurence Cole would rescue him from having to fulfill the last four rounds of his contractual obligation. Cole is what he is, but he is also a Texan, and Texans don’t abide gamecocks that strut and plume better than they peck; if Broner expected Cole to disqualify Maidana for fighting dirty it was but one more miscalculation in a night of plenty.
Here is the place one traditionally walks back some inflammatory clause or other, hedging on a character too strong for the moment, but there will be none of that today. The schadenfreude Broner induced in others is now his to bear. The most charitable emotion his current plight inspires is indifference.
Bart Barry can be reached at bart.barrys.email (at) gmail.com
