By William Mackay: British welterweight champion Kell Brook (22-0, 15 KO’s) will be back in action on December 11th at the ExCel Arena, in Dockland, London. There’s still no opponent for that date. It was hoped that Brook, 24, would take a major step up in competition and take on undefeated Mike Jones (22-0, 18 KO’s), but that fight likely isn’t going to be taking place now until early 2011. However, hopefully a good opponent can be found to fight Brook and give him his first taste of top opposition.

In his last fight, Brook defeated Michael Jennings by 5th round stoppage after cutting him in the 5th in the Magnificent Seven card on September 18th. It’s hard to tell how good Brook is as a fighter, because Jennings looked like he didn’t want to be there and didn’t seem to put much of an effort into fighting back and making an interesting fight of it. Sadly, that was probably Brook’s best opponent of his entire six year pro career. You would think with his number #1 ranking by the World Boxing Organization (WBO) that Brook would have fought someone better than Jennings by now.

However, the vast majority of Brook’s opponents have come from the UK, and none of them are 1st tier opposition, other than Jennings. I don’t agree with Jennings being a first tier fighter. I’m sorry, I see him as a 2nd tier guy. You can count that as being a fight against a 1st tier fighter but I don’t buy that. To me, that’s like Amir Khan when he faced number #1 ranked Dmitri Salita, who for some reason the WBA had put at number #1 without Salita having proved that he belonged in that spot. Fightnews doesn’t have Brook ranked in their top 15 welterweights, and I’m inclined to agree with that ranking. I haven’t been impressed with what I’ve seen of Brook thus far.

I know a lot of people in the UK like to compare him to Naseem Hamed, but I don’t see much of any similarity between the two fighters. Hamed was a tremendous puncher his entire career, whereas Brook seems to have only average power. He may have a lot of knockouts on his record, but look at the guys he’s compiled those knockouts against. They’re not exactly 1st tier opposition. Brook seems to be missing the kind of big power that he’ll need to do well in the upper tier and his hand speed isn’t overwhelming either. There’s a lot faster welterweights than him. I don’t really see any one area where I can say that Brook is a class above the other top tier fighters. He gets hit a lot when he’s coming forward to try and land his shots. I like that he moves around a lot, but it seems like wasted movement.

Brook seems to move just for the sake of moving without any real purpose. He’ll need to conserve that useless movement when he finally takes on a top tier fighter, whenever that is. I’m hoping he’s finally matched against a top fighter in his next fight on December 11th, but I’m not holding my breath. It would be sad if his first fight against a top tier fighter doesn’t occur until he faces Jones next year. What’s the point of waiting so long? Put up in with some of the bottom ranked top tier fighters and see how he does, like Shawn Porter, Lanardo Tyner, Sebastian Lujan, Brad Solomon, Randall Bailey, or Luis Carlos Abregu. I think any one of those fighters would be an excellent choice for Brook’s next fight on December 11th.

Do I see Brook fighting any of them next? Nope. I see him matched against some more 2nd tier fodder from the UK. You can’t learn anything about Brook until he takes on a good fighter, and I don’t see Jennings as being someone that should have been ranked in the top 15. Brook needs to be matched against someone relatively tough. If Brook can’t beat a bottom ranked fighter like the ones that I mentioned, then so be it. If he can’ beat them, then how in the world do they think he’s going to win and hold down a title? He won’t.