For many years, the boxing world has seen Adrien Broner neglect reaching his full potential. The former multi-division world champion was once upon a time closely compared to Floyd Mayweather Jr. who served as his mentor. Now, the 33-year old’s career is arguably facing a decline, and with his latest move to mutually terminate his contract with BLK Prime, the free agent’s future in boxing seems very much in doubt.
While Adrien Broner (34-4-1, 24 KO’s) has done himself no favors in being regarded as somewhat of a bust after years of wild antics that saw him face the law several times. Even with him having slightly mellowed the past couple of years, Adrien Broner has still indicated he had some troubles when he revealed in a recent interview with the DAZN Boxing Show that he was struggling with alcoholism.
Despite the Ohio-born fighter clearly struggling with personal and mental issues, Broner seemed to have the last opportunity to make waves in boxing after he was signed to a contract with BLK Prime, a subscription video-on-demand company that has recently dived in the sport of boxing after their debut show featuring Terence Crawford (39-0, 30 KO’s) defending his WBO Welterweight title against David Avanesyan (29-4-1, 17 KO’s).
When Broner announced him parting ways with BLK Prime, he was naturally regarded as somewhat of the cause of this abrupt departure, but we have observed a noticeable trend with BLK Prime that suggest they have had a hand in Broner leaving.
BLK Prime’s handling of Broner’s first two opponents show a terrifying trend that leads one to conclude they are grossly incompetent when it comes to the world of boxing.
The first mistake made was signing Broner as their first major fighter, who despite his previous-lauded reputation as a generational talent was self-admittedly still struggling with his own issues even after signing with Prime. A better use of that money would surely have been to net a young and upcoming fighter such as the likes of Stephen Fulton (21-0, 8 KO’s). Though of course the pool of American fighters they can sign to feature on their brand are slim given most are signed to exclusive contracts with other companies or promotions, there are plenty of boxers who slip under the radar while being known as genuine talents that can one day become a world champion, John Ramirez (11-0, 8 KO’s) being just one of many examples of such fighters.
Then there are the mistakes BLK Prime have made while seeking to arrange opponents for Adrien Broner to fight. As was pointed out by Ivan Redkach’s (23-6-1, 18 KO’s) wife in a story we covered, BLK Prime did factually sign another deal behind Redkach with his ex-promoter Joe DeGuardia, involving his own promotion, Star Boxing. It was a mistake on their part that was never admitted to; in fact, the company went out of their own way to declare that they had no fault in Ivan Redkach dropping out as an opponent, despite them clearly having unnecessarily included his promoter DeGuardia in a deal that was never supposed to involve him – or his promotion – in the first place.
The news surrounding Redkach seemed to be waved away by most boxing media as Henry “Hank” Lundy (31-12-1, 14 KO’s) was soon announced as Broner’s second opponent in mid-January. Upon closely monitoring who Lundy was supposed to fight before facing Broner, our team discovered that Ernesto Mercado (9-0, 9 KO’s) was already slated to fight Lundy on the 4th of February, while a fight with Broner was scheduled on the 25th by the time the fight between him and Lundy was announced.
Seeing as how Lundy was already scheduled to face an opponent before BLK Prime’s announcement, questions remain why they still commenced with announcing the fight despite knowing he already had a fight lined up. Some may conclude that they were confident they could get Lundy out of his fight with Mercado, but one would have thought they might look for any other available opponent when Lundy’s fight with Mercado was already clearly scheduled. Lundy would eventually be pulled out by BLK Prime after not being able to escape his contract with Ernesto Mercado.
Like with the Redkach situation, BLK Prime seems to lack the means to communicate what occurred despite their social media accounts being quite active when it comes to announcing fights. With outreach towards fans poor and limited towards promoting their fights, no one received a thorough understanding of what occurred with Adrien Broner.
Lundy was replaced with Michael Williams Jr. (20-1, 13 KO’s) who himself had to pull out of the previously-scheduled February 25th fight with Adrien Broner. Though that was not a case of BLK Prime being at any fault, the two previous cases showed a perplexing pattern that seemed to center around BLK Prime either being too inexperienced or lax.
Broner’s announcement that “they couldn’t deliver” seemed to have fallen on deaf ears given his reputation that characterized him as “The Problem” he had taken as his moniker, but the four-weight former world champion played no part in BLK Prime’s poor decision making.
It is high time that BLK Prime is scrutinized. It seems to lack a fundamental interest in communicating with the boxing community as a whole, and most of the news that centered around Broner’s opponents falling off had to be gathered from second-hand sources. Their track record in how they have handled fights so far seems even worse. Not only were they clearly at fault for Broner’s first two opponents having to be replaced, but their first official boxing event they held featuring Terence Crawford is still steeped in controversy given David Avanesyan’s accusations against Crawford’s team. Though they are not responsible for Avanesyan’s claims of glove tampering as they only finance and fund the event, it doesn’t help their case of inscrutability when one of their events is facing these kind of issues, while they couldn’t even manage to launch their second event due to actions that they themselves initiated.
It doesn’t help that BLK Prime’s ownership is completely unknown. This is quite uncommon in boxing; most promotions, networks or other stakeholders have recognizable figures owning said companies. Even the extremely-elusive Al Haymon of the PBC, can clearly be identified as the founder and owner of aforementioned company. BLK Prime seems to be the only company in boxing whose owner’s identity can only be surmised by guessing.
Zab Judah, former undisputed Welterweight champion seems to have been placed at the forefront of the company’s public appearances, but with even his role in the company uncertain, questions still remain as to who BLK Prime is actually run by.
This is naturally a concern, especially given unsubstantiated rumors of crime lord Daniel Kinnahan being involved in boxing, and boxing’s own muddied history with mobsters. With ownership of BLK Prime still kept secret and their company not exactly making the impact they had professed to make with one cancelled show, and their first riddled with controversy, it stands to reason that BLK Prime will need to be more attentive and transparent if they hope to make any lasting impact in the sport of boxing.
