Adrien Broner knocked out Ashley Theophane and then called out his promoter Floyd Mayweather for an encore.
Broner rocked Ashley Theophane in the third and fourth rounds of their 140-pound fight at the DC Armory. But the Brit’s activity kept him in the fight. Theophane inflicted cuts above and below Broner’s right eye, stepping on the gas in the sixth, seventh, and eighth rounds as Broner relaxed on cruise control, taking body shots and an occasional overhand right that penetrated his formidable guard.
Broner hurt his opponent with a right about 30 seconds into the ninth before pouncing on a wobbly Theophane. The Problem landed several more hard rights that sent his adversary stumbling without any solutions. A knockout looked imminent but Theophane continued to intelligently defend himself when the referee prematurely called the fight off. The Brit alerted the ref to a clear low blow from Broner when the third man in the ring stopped the fight, perhaps mistaking Theophane’s arm-signal complaint for a no mas gesture. In any event, Theophane looked on the verge of getting stopped regardless of the cup shot, making the stoppage defensible if defended by few.
Because the victor weighed-in at 140.4 pounds, he lost his WBA super-lightweight belt on the scales (losing his bushy beard might have meant not losing his belt). The win pushed him to 32-2 with 24 knockouts.
Broner characteristically praised Broner after the fight.
Obliquely referencing the assault charges he looks to surrender to in Cincinnati on Monday, the junior welterweight announced: “I want to give a pat on the back to myself.” He declared, “I definitely gave you all what I promised. It wasn’t in the fourth round. But I knocked his ass out, though.”
With former mentor Floyd Mayweather, who left open the possibility of comeback in an interview with Antonio Tarver earlier in the program, observing from ringside, Broner proclaimed: “Somebody that I looked up to, somebody that I admire took the chance to do an interview and talk bad about me.”
Mayweather, whom Broner dismissed the notion of fighting when Breitbart Sports broached the idea two years ago with the response “blood is blood,” recently criticized his onetime mini-me for demonstratively refusing change at a Walmart cash register. Noting his street origins and a childhood diet of Corn Flakes with water — roots which he perhaps forgot in that checkout line — Broner explained that Mayweather’s putdowns mean: “He’s gotta see me.”