Kell Brook to fight on Froch vs. Ward undercard on 12/17

By Scott Gilfoid: Undefeated Kell Brook (25-0, 17 KO’s) will be fighting for the first time in the United States on December 17th when he sees air time on the undercard of the Super Six tournament finals bout between WBC super middleweight champion Carl Froch and WBA super middleweight champion Andre Ward at the Boardwalk Hall in Atlantic City, New Jersey.

Eddie Hearn, the promoter for the 25-year-old Brook, sees this as the final bout for Brook before he’s finally matched against a quality opponent in 2012. Brook could possibly fight for a world title in 2012 against either IBF welterweight champion Andre Berto or WBA champion Vyacheslav Senchenko. But as for the December date, don’t expect too much in the way of quality for Brook. Supposedly, Hearn is looking to match Brook against a recognizable contender in the welterweight division but we’re probably talking fringe contender at best.

There’s a lot of fighters in the fringes of the welterweight division who more like 2nd tier guys than anything remotedly resembling a 1st tier fighter. We just saw a good example of that in Brook’s matching against the 34-year-old number #5 ranked IBF contender Rafael Jackiewicz (38-10-1, 19 KO’s) earlier this month on October 8th.

Jackiewicz was overmatched in this fight and looked like someone from the 2nd tier. This is what I mean. There’s a lot of guys that are ranked in the welterweight division but really are mediocre fighters. You can put Brook in with them and say he’s being put in with a contender, but what we’re really seeing is more of C+ fighter being put in with Brook. Since Hearn’s goal is to get a title fight for Brook in 2012, it seems like a better idea for Brook to be matched against someone that can actually fight and who deserves to be ranked in the top 15 rather than just someone that one of the sanctioning bodies has given an inflated ranking.

I think Brook is going to have a really hard time when he’s finally put in with some quality fighters.

I see Berto and Vyacheslav as paper champions, but they’re so much better than the guys that have been fed to Brook his entire eight year pro career that it’s not even funny. Brook is going to be in for something of a shock when he does get matched against one of those guys. And I think Brook’s lack of arm length is going to be a major problem for him. Brook isn’t a huge puncher, and his arms look much too short for the division he’s fighting in. You can’t have alligator arms and think you can compete against welterweights with longer reach. I know Manny Pacquiao doesn’t have much in the way of reach, but he’s so much faster and hard hitting than Brook that he can get away with. Brook isn’t that fast and his power is fairly average as far as I can see.

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