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Adrien Broner will be making his HBO return on November 3, and it's possible that he could face WBC lightweight titlist Antonio DeMarco, who scored a first-round stoppage win over John Molina on Saturday night in Oakland on the Ward vs Dawson undercard.
DeMarco says he wants the fight, and Broner has indicated he does, as well. DeMarco's promoter Gary Shaw says that the money and the site have to be right, but they're interested in the fight:
"I had a meeting with HBO, and there was discussion about where we would go next with DeMarco. ... (Nov. 3) would be a discussion that I would have to have with Team DeMarco to see if he would want to go back into training that quickly, because he would need about six weeks to train. And that would mean being back in training as early as next week. So Nov. 3 might not be possible. I don't know. But could there be a fight? Yes. But it depends on if the money is right, and, obviously, whether we can be ready or not."
Given that DeMarco didn't take any punishment on Saturday, it seems perfectly reasonable to bring him back so quickly, especially for such a potentially lucrative fight and an HBO main event, but training camps aren't easy on a fighter's body, either, and it would also be understandable if they wanted to make sure they didn't essentially send DeMarco into a Broner fight worn out from training so much between those two dates.
Personally, I love the fight and hope we see it. DeMarco isn't the world's biggest talent, but he gets the job done, he's tough, and he can punch. He's also earned this -- his last two U.S. TV appearances have been a Fight of the Year candidate and a 44-second blitz, and he'd be Broner's best opponent ever, probably, at least since Daniel Ponce De Leon, and as we know, Broner had no easy night with Ponce De Leon last year.
Like Ponce De Leon, DeMarco is a southpaw. Unlike Ponce De Leon, he's 5'10" and not 5'5", he's not unnaturally slow for a top fighter, and he's not naturally a super bantamweight.
I think there's plenty of intrigue in a DeMarco-Broner matchup. If Broner's going to fight at 135, he'd be going right into the fire against one of the division's best if he faced DeMarco. I just can't see anything bad to say about the idea of putting these two in the ring together. It's a really good fight, about as good as you're going to get at 135 pounds right now.