Every time Adrien Broner fights, we get the same wave of articles from boxing writers. And the level of self-righteous bullshit contained within varies depending on how big the upcoming Broner fight is.
For this upcoming PPV bout with Manny Pacquiao, the panty-soiling prose has been especially pompous.
“We shouldn’t have to be writing about this jerk,” the media writes in unison as they delight in having a safe target for their sanctimonious moral outrage.
One would think that in a sport as poorly regulated and as grossly mismanaged as boxing—a sport where people are literally dying from incompetence and/or corruption—there’d be no outrage left for a fighter who simply says outrageous stuff for the sake of getting attention before a fight. Yet, the swamp-assed, sour-shoed boxing media can’t run fast enough to their keyboards to lament over how they shouldn’t be giving Broner any attention.
Oh, yeah…they are way too good for this Broner nonsense, so much so that they simply can’t stop talking about it or stop delighting in their own outrage over everything he does.
The fact of the matter is that Broner keeps getting big fights and high-profile TV slots because of the attention his behavior generates. In a world where 99% of fighters deal in canned, promoter-approved comments and writers recycle publicist-crafted quotes from press releases, someone who actually says SOMETHING—even if it’s crude, obscene, or downright nasty—stands out from the crowd.
The writers who smugly proclaim themselves to be above it all when it comes to Broner are too dumb (or too caught up in their own sad pursuit of being blogger-hip) to realize that they are the biggest suckers when it comes to this game. They latch on to Broner because he’s fun to write about, gives them plenty to write about, and offers something different from the day-to-day subject matter that usually fills their social media timelines.
Broner’s recent verbal assault on excruciatingly inoffensive Showtime broadcaster Al Bernstein set off a 24-hour cycle of extra-pompous posturing from the media that has been especially over the top.
“The Problem” playacting Floyd Mayweather against Bernstein’s Larry Merchant at the recent Pacquiao-Broner press conference came off as more sad than offensive. It reeked of attention-seeking desperation from Broner to call the whitest, non-edgy man in America a “Bitch-ass nigga” and to slam him to his face for “talkin’ shit” about him on Twitter.
But a boxing media that lusts after safe topics to be outraged over jumped right on the AB vs. AB “controversy.”
“O-M-G. Broner is such an ass, such a caveman. Zero class. How dare he pick on that lovable Al Bernstein. Why does he even get all these chances to get big fights where he can do all this outrageous, classless stuff?”
Well, geniuses…he gets all these opportunities because he can get you to talk about him. And, in boxing, attention=drawing power=money. Actually, promoters would be wise to try and understand the earning potential of fighters actually being allowed to show some personality—whether as “good guys” or as “bad guys.”
The day the boxing media stops falling all over itself to sound clever in dissing Broner is the day Broner has to rely on in-ring accomplishment rather than out-of-ring bluster to get big fights.