Adrien Broner’s Pain Should Not Be Internet Entertainment.

Adrien Broner’s Pain Should Not Be Internet Entertainment.

(ThyBlackMan.com) Adrien Broner once carried the kind of promise the fight game rarely hands out. For a while, people talked about him like the next Floyd Mayweather. World titles across four weight classes, mouth running faster than his hands, a swagger that made you either love him or want to see him humbled. That was a while back now. The kid from Cincinnati is a grown man, and although he is talking seriously about fighting again, much of the public has come to know him lately through a screen instead of a ring.

Kick, mostly. That world came to him through Deen The Great, and before long the partnership turned the chaos surrounding them into a brand. They called themselves the Krash Out Boyz. Sit with that name a second. They put the meltdown right there in the title, sold it as content, and folks lined up to watch.

Here is what troubles me. Every slurred word, every argument, every time the former champ looked lost on camera, somebody clipped it. Chopped it into fifteen seconds, slapped a caption on top, pushed it into the feed. Millions watched. Folks laughed, shared, then waited for the next one like it was a sitcom with a fresh episode every night.

We have a phrase for all this now. Crashing out. The slang grew out of Black communities, with Louisiana playing an important part in its rise, and rappers helped carry it into the wider culture before social media wrung every last drop out of it. Now everybody says it, and far too often they say it about us.

That is the part few people want to touch. The internet has developed a real appetite for watching Black men fall apart in public. Not just Adrien. Think about how many viral moments feature a brother at his lowest, and how quickly the comments fill with laughing faces and popcorn. The unraveling becomes its own genre. Pain turns into product.

I am not naive about his role here. This is no child. Nobody forced him to sit in front of that camera. The drinking, the loud mouth, the public messes, all of it went out on film, and some of it became profitable. There have been financial troubles, a civil lawsuit containing serious allegations, and feuds spilling from livestreams into real life. In early July, he and Deen even had to be separated during a heated confrontation while wearing matching pink hoodies. You cannot excuse everything a person does just because he is struggling.

But the struggle is not speculation. Broner has publicly discussed problems with alcohol, gambling and his mental health. Back in 2016, friends became so concerned by alarming posts on his social media accounts that police were contacted. Years later, in 2022, he withdrew from a scheduled fight with Omar Figueroa Jr. and openly said he needed to take care of his mental health. That is not internet gossip. That is a man telling the world that something inside him needed attention.

So what does the audience do with that? Mostly nothing. Knowing he has struggled does not slow the clip machine down even a little. If anything, it can make the footage more valuable. Famous and coming undone reads as comedy to some people. Famous, broke and coming undone is an even bigger jackpot. Millions earned across a boxing career eventually gave way to very public financial trouble, and too many people treated the empty pockets like a punchline instead of a warning.

Deen deserves a word too. Give the brother his credit for helping pull Broner into a lane that generated income at a time when the big boxing checks were no longer arriving the way they once did. For a while, streaming looked like one of the smartest moves Adrien had made in years. Somebody handed him another way to stay visible, make money and build something outside the ring.

Trouble is, the same setup that gave Broner another income stream also kept cameras rolling through some of his lowest moments, and those moments repeatedly became the clips that traveled farthest. When the relationship between the two men became strained, Deen arranged for another cameraman so Broner could run his own broadcasts. The partnership split publicly. More clips followed. Even the breakup became part of the show.

I keep circling one thing. Underneath the meme is a person. A human being with a mama, with children, with a body that has absorbed thousands of punches and a mind he has openly admitted has struggled. We know this. The receipts have been sitting in front of us for years. We watch anyway, because watching is easy and caring costs something.

Ryan Garcia, of all people, publicly reached out earlier this year and encouraged Broner to stop drinking and get himself together. Fans typed the same thing underneath video after video. Please stop drinking. Get some help. Some meant it. Plenty of those same people turned around and reposted the newest breakdown because the engagement was too good to leave alone. That contradiction lives in everybody who consumes this kind of content. We say we care while our thumbs hit share.

I came up in a time when a brother falling apart got handled quietly. Family stepped in. The church folks came by. Somebody sat with you. It was not entertainment, and it sure was not a revenue stream. I am not romanticizing those days, because plenty of hurt got buried that should have been spoken about openly. But we have swung so far in the other direction that a person’s collapse can now play out before an audience of strangers who treat every ugly moment like another episode.

And here is where the story gets more interesting. Broner is trying to change the ending. This summer he and Deen launched a 45 day streaming challenge built around sobriety, training, losing weight and preparing for another possible boxing run. Broner has been talking about staying sober, getting his body back and returning to the ring. People inside boxing, including Claressa Shields, have encouraged the effort. Maybe the real test for the audience is what happens now. We were willing to watch every stumble. Are we willing to pay the same attention when the man is trying to stand back up?

Maybe the honest question is no longer simply what is wrong with Adrien. We know a good deal about what has troubled him because he has told us himself. The harder question aims at the rest of us, the ones scrolling, laughing and waiting for tomorrow’s clip. What does it say about us if a Black man’s breakdown earns more attention than his attempt to rebuild?

There is no clean answer here. Broner still has responsibility for what he says, what he does and what he puts in front of a camera. Grace does not mean pretending bad decisions never happened. But accountability and compassion are not enemies. A man can answer for his choices without becoming public property at his lowest moment.

Finish story here; Adrien Broner’s Pain Should Not Be Internet Entertainment.