Adrien Broner will have to wait a little longer for his ring return.
BoxingScene.com has confirmed that BLK Prime has officially pulled the plug on the previously scheduled February 25 Pay-Per-View event to have featured the former four-division opponent. The development comes on the heels of Broner watching a third opponent fall through in a span of 30 days for a show to have taken place at Gateway Center Arena in the College Park section of Atlanta, Georgia.
A new date is expected to be confirmed shortly, with an April timeframe targeted and for the show to remain in the Atlanta area, confirming a breaking news alert first posted by ESPN’s Mike Coppinger.
As previously reported by BoxingScene.com, Broner was left without an opponent after Michael Williams Jr. suffered a fractured jaw and was forced to withdraw on Thursday. North Carolina’s Williams (20-1, 13KOs) was already a late replacement for Philadelphia’s Hank Lundy (31-12-1, 14KOs), which came earlier this month. The opponent switch was first reported by BoxingScene.com just one week after Lundy was named as the new opponent for Broner, replacing Ivan Redkach who was forced to withdraw due to a bitter dispute with promoter Joe DeGuardia.
Last ditch efforts to salvage the event proved futile, with the upstart company opting to instead shut down and regroup.
Among the casualties is a cursed lightweight battle between former titlists Tevin Farmer (30-5-1, 6KOs) and Mickey Bey (23-3-1, 11KOs). Their scheduled ten-round fight has been punted around the globe and now going on at least a fourth scheduled fight date. Neither Farmer nor Bey have fought since the pandemic.
Cincinnati’s Broner (34-4-1, 24KOs) last fought in February 2021, when he claimed a twelve-round, unanimous decision win over Jovanie Santiago in Uncasville, Connecticut. That bout was his first since a loss to Manny Pacquiao in their January 2019 secondary welterweight title fight, which sold roughly 400,000 units atop a Showtime Pay-Per-View telecast.
Broner was due to face Omar Figueroa in a battle of faded former titlists last August 20 in Hollywood, Florida. The 33-year-old boxer withdrew from the Showtime main event as presented by Premier Boxing Champions (PBC) just ahead of fight week, citing a needed mental health reset.
It turned out to be the last time Broner’s name would be attached to a PBC event. The polarizing figure next surfaced as the star of a virtual press conference to confirm his multi-fight agreement with ‘Uncle Dez’ Desmond Gumbs and the BLK Prime family last October. It came less than two months prior to BLK’s debut showing last December 10, which saw WBO welterweight champion Terence ‘Bud’ Crawford (39-0, 30KOs) score a sixth-round knockout of David Avanesyan at CHI Health Center in his hometown of Omaha, Nebraska.
Hours prior to the event, Broner’s own BLK Prime debut was formally announced during an on-site press conference.
Jake Donovan is a senior writer for BoxingScene.com. Twitter: @JakeNDaBox