Somewhere between made and born, fighters happen.
“I was little. My uncle and my dad, they would let us box the neighborhood in the yard,” WBO super featherweight champion Adrien Broner told me recently. “I guess my dad saw I had talent. One day he said, ‘C’mon. I am going to take you to the gym.’ He didn’t take me but then one day he really did take me. The first day I go in, my dad go in talkin.’ He is rippin’ and runnin’ at the mouth. ‘My son is this. He that!” So my current coach now, Coach Mike [Stafford] said ‘Put him in the ring.”
Broner grew up in Cincinatti, Ohio. There was nothing nice about the streets he had to avoid to get to where he is now; poised to defend his 22-0 with 18 knockouts record and WBO title against Eloy Perez live on HBO as the co-feature to Devon Alexander vs. Marcos Maidana.
“It’s tough. You’re going to fight,” Broner said when I asked him to describe growing up in Cincinatti. “You’re going to grow up with friends that will . . . Growing up, you are going to see guys that are going to die, guys that will go to jail. You’re going to see guys that are doing a lot of the wrong stuff. And then you might have a very slight chance to find some people that are doing the right things. And if you find that right person you stick around them. And I had that person around me.”
Back in the gym, Broner stood poised to fight for the very first time in a gym.
“So they put me in with one of the best young guys in there,” Broner explained “He had to be about 7 or 8. I beat him up real bad. I dropped him and stuff. Everyone was so amazed because it was my first day in the gym. Coach Mike was like ‘Alright that was good.’ And then he said ‘Where’s Nuke?’ And everybody started calling ‘Nuke.’ And ‘Nuke’ is three-time Olympian Rau’Shee Warren. That’s what he is now. He’s older than me. So he had to be 9 or whatever. So they call him. My Dad was like ‘Ok. You do the same thing to him.’ He is hyping me up, giving me the pep talk.”
Broner, nicknamed “The Problem” for the hell he and his twin brother used to wreak on amateur competitions across the country, has two distinct attributes that drive him. He is a natural entertainer who loves the spotlight and he is competitive about everything.
“It was like . . . I love attention,” Broner said of that first win with a gym of people watching. “I love putting on a show. That’s what I like. Just putting on a show and competing. I don’t care what I am doing. It can be who can walk the fastest. Who can hold their eyes open the longest. I don’t care. If it’s a competition, I’m winning it. That is what keeps me coming back. I am really going to go for it. I work really hard and stay where I am at the top.”
That first fight gave Broner his first taste of intoxicating victory. But the call for “Nuke” was about to show Broner the other side of boxing. That most important lesson that for every guy you can walk right through, there is someone out there waiting to whoop your ass.
“So [Warren] got all his gear on. Everybody was all hyper in the gym. The bell rang and he beat me up real bad and made me cry,” said Broner. “And my dad was like you know, ‘That’s good.’ And I’ve just been in the gym ever since.”
As with many young men in the history of the world, that first fight made friends for life out of Broner and Warren. Rau’Shee became that friend who never wavered to the streets. Warren, being the older fighter, mentored Broner and helped him stay the course throughout their lives. He kept both men on the path towards boxing glory. Now at 24, Warren is headed to the Olympics for the third time in search of gold and Broner is a world champion on HBO. Their friendship is the fuel that drives them to keep moving on up in the boxing world. That and the alternative to winning.
“I’m the young one. He is the big brother. He has always been a big brother,” said Broner of his friend. “He’s always been a great mentor to me. Just to see him push for this Olympics has motivated to keep me going as far as I can. I always do 110%. Growing up, we had thirty kids that could fight. Like really, really good fighters. It’s down to basically me and him. He’s real close to me. I just want to see him do his thing. And I want to see him go to the pro ranks, too.”
That first day is as influential a first day as there can be. Broner felt the power of performing, winning and losing. That first day he felt like a warrior heading into enemy territory to make his mark. He got a lot more than he bargained for.
“That’s exactly what it was. It was ‘These guys don’t know me. I’m about to blow their mind.’ That’s what I did until Rau’Shee came along and kicked my butt,” he laughed.
Above all, he gained Warren.
“He never drifted off. He stayed focused. We came through the gym together,” said Broner of the bond. “Growing up in Cincinatti is tough. Times get real but you have to stay focused and just thank God and hope that he keeps you safe enough and focused enough to stay in whatever it is that you do.”
Since that day, Broner has gone to the gym like some people go to church. It is his solace from the outside world. While the gym has kept Broner off the streets, the pull of it at times lured him in. There have been times when he nearly strayed the way 28 other men did alongside him.
“Growing up in Cincinatti, my mom and dad weren’t the richest parents. But they always made sure we had Jordan’s. That was real big to me, you know?” Broner explained. “Then when I started getting older, I started wanting things that I couldn’t have and that they couldn’t afford so . . . sometimes you just drift off. Around 15, 16 and 17, 18, I got in some trouble. But I got out of the trouble and I came to my senses and went back to boxing. Three and half years later down the road I am a world champion.”
Broner knows that the story of the Cincinatti fighter who hits it big only to let the trappings of fame pull him down is an old one always ready to be told again.
“Growing up in Cincinatti is hard,” said Broner. “You’ve heard the stories of typical Cincinatti fighter that gets there and then falls off. I call it the ‘Cincinatti Curse.’ They get to the top and they fall to the streets. But [Warren and I] have always had great support behind us. Me, I have my mom and my dad. And we have Coach Mike. That’s another father figure that I have had since I was six. We always had that support. Sometimes it gets hard but we love the game so much. Boxing is all we know. We always come back, you know? It don’t matter what’s going on outside of boxing. I could be having the worst day in the world. It don’t matter if it was the worst day in the world. Once I get inside the gym. Everything just disappears.”
In boxing, the money is not the greatest coming up even if you are on HBO a few times like Broner has been. While it is the place to be and the paychecks are better than anywhere else, three fights on HBO is not retirement money. While Broner’s brash personality has already made him one of the most polarizing fighters out there, he recognizes how far he has to go to get the money that comes with the notoriety.
“A lot of people say ‘I’m a celebrity.’ I’m this. I’m that. I’m on HBO. But they don’t understand every day I still wake up in the hood like a transmission,” said Broner. “That drives me to work harder. My mom and my dad, they still work. So I know I haven’t made it to where I need to be at. There’s no way in hell that my mom and dad need to still be working. But I’m working hard. I don’t want my kids to go through what I went through growing up. Life is not a game. Like I said, I didn’t have the richest parents but they tried to keep me as satisfied as possible. That’s why I work so hard. I owe a lot to them. I owe a lot to them. Coach Mike, my family, they all supported me.”
Broner has been on HBO three times. The first was on an undercard of Saul Alvarez’ first title shot. Broner was up against Daniel Ponce De Leon, a featherweight coming up in weight. De Leon is known as a heavy puncher and because of that, Broner made a less than exciting network debut.
“In the Ponce De Leon fight, for me, it was ‘I had to be smart,” explained Broner. “I could’ve went in there and tried to bang with this knockout artist. At the time he had more knockouts than I had fights. He still does to this day. For me, it was just being smart, get this victory and move forward. Maybe it wasn’t a fan friendly style. I gave myself a B. I could have done a lot more after watching the fight. 19 and 0 young prospect coming up fighting a former world champion. He was a world champion and an Olympian. He wasn’t a little pebble. He was a big stepping stone for me. He was a big step for me and I passed.”
Some would argue Broner didn’t win the fight but nevertheless he was brought back to HBO. This time against Jason Litzau who had surprised many in his previous appearance on HBO as an opponent by winning a fight he was a 15-1 underdog in.
“The fights were getting bigger and bigger. Litzau was coming off his greatest win. I went straight through that. I didn’t do what he wanted to do. I had a game plan and I stuck to it. I caught him and I finished him,” said Broner.
Then came the title fight against Vicente Rodriguez, a fighter we’ve never seen before and will probably never see again; Odd for a title fight but par for the boxing course. Even Broner seemed unimpressed by the guy he knocked out in three rounds to claim his first belt.
“This last fight, it was like I really didn’t care who they put in the ring with me. I knew the fight was not going to go too long,” said Broner.
Broner’s manager/adviser Al Haymon appears to have saved Broner’s toughest fight for his first defense. Saturday night, he takes on Eloy Perez, 23-0-2 with 7 knockouts. Don’t let the seven knockouts fool you. Two of those were in his last two fights. An all-around fighter, Perez will present a challenge to Broner such as he has not seen at the pro level. But “The Problem” isn’t worried. This is what he does.
“Right now I feel like I am maximizing my talents. I am feeling myself and my swag and I am comfortable,” he said with casual confidence. “I don’t care where I am at. As long as I have four corners of a boxing ring, a nice outfit and some boxing shoes, man, I am going to put on a show.”
Broner is possibly a special athlete. He is certainly fast and his power appears real. But he is not your typical boxer. He freelances like a Jazz musician. It is a style that can be explosive but also has great potential to be boring. Broner understands that while this is all entertainment, winning is everything even if that means being unexciting. Fights are won in the mind before they can be won by the body.
“[Conditioning] is one of the greatest strengths of a fighter,” said Broner. “But the greatest strength of a fighter, I’m 22 but you can probably tell that I was schooled by the older guys. I know a lot. I’ve been through a lot. The greatest strength of a fighter is the mind. It’s the mental. It’s the mental part. Boxing is 10% physical and 90% mental. And I say that because it can be a guy with more skills than you. Other fighters can be greater conditioned. But is his mind set on the level where it needs to be? The physical go down the drain if it isn’t. A fighter can go in the ring and fight an old school guy and get tricked into punches. A guy that really knows the game, he can outsmart a fighter. That’s just like Mayweather. Like right now, I look at it like he’s got amazing talent but he’s outsmarting these guys. He’s crushing them mentally. In boxing, it’s like a chess game. The best mind that makes the best moves is going to win. That’s how I look at boxing.”
Broner has high ambitions. After beating Perez, he figures to have roughly ten years more in the sport, including division clearing title runs at 135, 140, and 147, becoming the best ever and then a move to the entertainment industry. He already is the CEO, along with Warren, of his own entertainment company, Band Camp. He’s put out a few songs. With his sights set on acting, producing, and beyond, Broner is an ambitious young man who is willing to fight for whatever he can get.
“Every time I get in the ring I fight like it’s my last fight because you are never promised tomorrow. Anything can happen. You know I don’t want to jinx nobody but anything can happen,” he said. “Whenever I get in the ring, no matter if I am sparring or beating the pads, I am going to do my best; especially in the fight. I am trying to go down in history being the best boxer ever. Not just going in line with a lot of good fighters; one of the best. No. I want to be right at the top; the best ever to do it. That’s my goal. Obviously it’s a big step to take but I am pushing forward to that and I am going to do whatever I am going to do to reach my goals.”
On this day, we didn’t talk much of Eloy Perez. Broner is the kind of fighter who knows that no matter what he says in private, the fight will play itself out on its own. What he can talk about are the broader lines of what he hopes to achieve. And then he will go back to working at making that happen.
“Some say that I’ve got this thing that you just can’t teach and I am starting to see that,” he said. “There’s a lot of fighters out there that is good. My next opponent is good. But I just think that whoever is on the other side of the ring, they gotta get it and I don’t see nobody beating me.”
When he said it, it didn’t feel like bragging. Just the way he sees the world. It’s the way Adrien Broner has to so that he can remain the one of two out of thirty.
. “I was little. My uncle and my dad, they would let us box the neighborhood in the yard,” WBO super featherweight champion Adrien Broner told me recently. “I guess my dad saw I had talent. One day he said, ‘C’mon. I am going to take you to the gym.’ He didn’t take me but then one day he really did take me. The first day I go in, my dad go in talkin.’ He is rippin’ and runnin’ at the mouth. ‘My son is this. He that!” So my current coach now, Coach Mike [Stafford] said ‘Put him in the ring.”
Broner grew up in Cincinatti, Ohio. There was nothing nice about the streets he had to avoid to get to where he is now; poised to defend his 22-0 with 18 knockouts record and WBO title against Eloy Perez live on HBO as the co-feature to Devon Alexander vs. Marcos Maidana.
“It’s tough. You’re going to fight,” Broner said when I asked him to describe growing up in Cincinatti. “You’re going to grow up with friends that will . . . Growing up, you are going to see guys that are going to die, guys that will go to jail. You’re going to see guys that are doing a lot of the wrong stuff. And then you might have a very slight chance to find some people that are doing the right things. And if you find that right person you stick around them. And I had that person around me.”
Back in the gym, Broner stood poised to fight for the very first time in a gym.
“So they put me in with one of the best young guys in there,” Broner explained “He had to be about 7 or 8. I beat him up real bad. I dropped him and stuff. Everyone was so amazed because it was my first day in the gym. Coach Mike was like ‘Alright that was good.’ And then he said ‘Where’s Nuke?’ And everybody started calling ‘Nuke.’ And ‘Nuke’ is three-time Olympian Rau’Shee Warren. That’s what he is now. He’s older than me. So he had to be 9 or whatever. So they call him. My Dad was like ‘Ok. You do the same thing to him.’ He is hyping me up, giving me the pep talk.”
Broner, nicknamed “The Problem” for the hell he and his twin brother used to wreak on amateur competitions across the country, has two distinct attributes that drive him. He is a natural entertainer who loves the spotlight and he is competitive about everything.
“It was like . . . I love attention,” Broner said of that first win with a gym of people watching. “I love putting on a show. That’s what I like. Just putting on a show and competing. I don’t care what I am doing. It can be who can walk the fastest. Who can hold their eyes open the longest. I don’t care. If it’s a competition, I’m winning it. That is what keeps me coming back. I am really going to go for it. I work really hard and stay where I am at the top.”
That first fight gave Broner his first taste of intoxicating victory. But the call for “Nuke” was about to show Broner the other side of boxing. That most important lesson that for every guy you can walk right through, there is someone out there waiting to whoop your ass.
“So [Warren] got all his gear on. Everybody was all hyper in the gym. The bell rang and he beat me up real bad and made me cry,” said Broner. “And my dad was like you know, ‘That’s good.’ And I’ve just been in the gym ever since.”
As with many young men in the history of the world, that first fight made friends for life out of Broner and Warren. Rau’Shee became that friend who never wavered to the streets. Warren, being the older fighter, mentored Broner and helped him stay the course throughout their lives. He kept both men on the path towards boxing glory. Now at 24, Warren is headed to the Olympics for the third time in search of gold and Broner is a world champion on HBO. Their friendship is the fuel that drives them to keep moving on up in the boxing world. That and the alternative to winning.
“I’m the young one. He is the big brother. He has always been a big brother,” said Broner of his friend. “He’s always been a great mentor to me. Just to see him push for this Olympics has motivated to keep me going as far as I can. I always do 110%. Growing up, we had thirty kids that could fight. Like really, really good fighters. It’s down to basically me and him. He’s real close to me. I just want to see him do his thing. And I want to see him go to the pro ranks, too.”
That first day is as influential a first day as there can be. Broner felt the power of performing, winning and losing. That first day he felt like a warrior heading into enemy territory to make his mark. He got a lot more than he bargained for.
“That’s exactly what it was. It was ‘These guys don’t know me. I’m about to blow their mind.’ That’s what I did until Rau’Shee came along and kicked my butt,” he laughed.
Above all, he gained Warren.
“He never drifted off. He stayed focused. We came through the gym together,” said Broner of the bond. “Growing up in Cincinatti is tough. Times get real but you have to stay focused and just thank God and hope that he keeps you safe enough and focused enough to stay in whatever it is that you do.”
Since that day, Broner has gone to the gym like some people go to church. It is his solace from the outside world. While the gym has kept Broner off the streets, the pull of it at times lured him in. There have been times when he nearly strayed the way 28 other men did alongside him.
“Growing up in Cincinatti, my mom and dad weren’t the richest parents. But they always made sure we had Jordan’s. That was real big to me, you know?” Broner explained. “Then when I started getting older, I started wanting things that I couldn’t have and that they couldn’t afford so . . . sometimes you just drift off. Around 15, 16 and 17, 18, I got in some trouble. But I got out of the trouble and I came to my senses and went back to boxing. Three and half years later down the road I am a world champion.”
Broner knows that the story of the Cincinatti fighter who hits it big only to let the trappings of fame pull him down is an old one always ready to be told again.
“Growing up in Cincinatti is hard,” said Broner. “You’ve heard the stories of typical Cincinatti fighter that gets there and then falls off. I call it the ‘Cincinatti Curse.’ They get to the top and they fall to the streets. But [Warren and I] have always had great support behind us. Me, I have my mom and my dad. And we have Coach Mike. That’s another father figure that I have had since I was six. We always had that support. Sometimes it gets hard but we love the game so much. Boxing is all we know. We always come back, you know? It don’t matter what’s going on outside of boxing. I could be having the worst day in the world. It don’t matter if it was the worst day in the world. Once I get inside the gym. Everything just disappears.”
In boxing, the money is not the greatest coming up even if you are on HBO a few times like Broner has been. While it is the place to be and the paychecks are better than anywhere else, three fights on HBO is not retirement money. While Broner’s brash personality has already made him one of the most polarizing fighters out there, he recognizes how far he has to go to get the money that comes with the notoriety.
“A lot of people say ‘I’m a celebrity.’ I’m this. I’m that. I’m on HBO. But they don’t understand every day I still wake up in the hood like a transmission,” said Broner. “That drives me to work harder. My mom and my dad, they still work. So I know I haven’t made it to where I need to be at. There’s no way in hell that my mom and dad need to still be working. But I’m working hard. I don’t want my kids to go through what I went through growing up. Life is not a game. Like I said, I didn’t have the richest parents but they tried to keep me as satisfied as possible. That’s why I work so hard. I owe a lot to them. I owe a lot to them. Coach Mike, my family, they all supported me.”
Broner has been on HBO three times. The first was on an undercard of Saul Alvarez’ first title shot. Broner was up against Daniel Ponce De Leon, a featherweight coming up in weight. De Leon is known as a heavy puncher and because of that, Broner made a less than exciting network debut.
“In the Ponce De Leon fight, for me, it was ‘I had to be smart,” explained Broner. “I could’ve went in there and tried to bang with this knockout artist. At the time he had more knockouts than I had fights. He still does to this day. For me, it was just being smart, get this victory and move forward. Maybe it wasn’t a fan friendly style. I gave myself a B. I could have done a lot more after watching the fight. 19 and 0 young prospect coming up fighting a former world champion. He was a world champion and an Olympian. He wasn’t a little pebble. He was a big stepping stone for me. He was a big step for me and I passed.”
Some would argue Broner didn’t win the fight but nevertheless he was brought back to HBO. This time against Jason Litzau who had surprised many in his previous appearance on HBO as an opponent by winning a fight he was a 15-1 underdog in.
“The fights were getting bigger and bigger. Litzau was coming off his greatest win. I went straight through that. I didn’t do what he wanted to do. I had a game plan and I stuck to it. I caught him and I finished him,” said Broner.
Then came the title fight against Vicente Rodriguez, a fighter we’ve never seen before and will probably never see again; Odd for a title fight but par for the boxing course. Even Broner seemed unimpressed by the guy he knocked out in three rounds to claim his first belt.
“This last fight, it was like I really didn’t care who they put in the ring with me. I knew the fight was not going to go too long,” said Broner.
Broner’s manager/adviser Al Haymon appears to have saved Broner’s toughest fight for his first defense. Saturday night, he takes on Eloy Perez, 23-0-2 with 7 knockouts. Don’t let the seven knockouts fool you. Two of those were in his last two fights. An all-around fighter, Perez will present a challenge to Broner such as he has not seen at the pro level. But “The Problem” isn’t worried. This is what he does.
“Right now I feel like I am maximizing my talents. I am feeling myself and my swag and I am comfortable,” he said with casual confidence. “I don’t care where I am at. As long as I have four corners of a boxing ring, a nice outfit and some boxing shoes, man, I am going to put on a show.”
Broner is possibly a special athlete. He is certainly fast and his power appears real. But he is not your typical boxer. He freelances like a Jazz musician. It is a style that can be explosive but also has great potential to be boring. Broner understands that while this is all entertainment, winning is everything even if that means being unexciting. Fights are won in the mind before they can be won by the body.
“[Conditioning] is one of the greatest strengths of a fighter,” said Broner. “But the greatest strength of a fighter, I’m 22 but you can probably tell that I was schooled by the older guys. I know a lot. I’ve been through a lot. The greatest strength of a fighter is the mind. It’s the mental. It’s the mental part. Boxing is 10% physical and 90% mental. And I say that because it can be a guy with more skills than you. Other fighters can be greater conditioned. But is his mind set on the level where it needs to be? The physical go down the drain if it isn’t. A fighter can go in the ring and fight an old school guy and get tricked into punches. A guy that really knows the game, he can outsmart a fighter. That’s just like Mayweather. Like right now, I look at it like he’s got amazing talent but he’s outsmarting these guys. He’s crushing them mentally. In boxing, it’s like a chess game. The best mind that makes the best moves is going to win. That’s how I look at boxing.”
Broner has high ambitions. After beating Perez, he figures to have roughly ten years more in the sport, including division clearing title runs at 135, 140, and 147, becoming the best ever and then a move to the entertainment industry. He already is the CEO, along with Warren, of his own entertainment company, Band Camp. He’s put out a few songs. With his sights set on acting, producing, and beyond, Broner is an ambitious young man who is willing to fight for whatever he can get.
“Every time I get in the ring I fight like it’s my last fight because you are never promised tomorrow. Anything can happen. You know I don’t want to jinx nobody but anything can happen,” he said. “Whenever I get in the ring, no matter if I am sparring or beating the pads, I am going to do my best; especially in the fight. I am trying to go down in history being the best boxer ever. Not just going in line with a lot of good fighters; one of the best. No. I want to be right at the top; the best ever to do it. That’s my goal. Obviously it’s a big step to take but I am pushing forward to that and I am going to do whatever I am going to do to reach my goals.”
On this day, we didn’t talk much of Eloy Perez. Broner is the kind of fighter who knows that no matter what he says in private, the fight will play itself out on its own. What he can talk about are the broader lines of what he hopes to achieve. And then he will go back to working at making that happen.
“Some say that I’ve got this thing that you just can’t teach and I am starting to see that,” he said. “There’s a lot of fighters out there that is good. My next opponent is good. But I just think that whoever is on the other side of the ring, they gotta get it and I don’t see nobody beating me.”
When he said it, it didn’t feel like bragging. Just the way he sees the world. It’s the way Adrien Broner has to so that he can remain the one of two out of thirty.
