By Scott Gilfoid: This Saturday night unbeaten welterweight contender Kell Brook (30-0, 20 KO’s) will be taking a slight step up fight, if you want to call it that, against former WBA 147 lb. strap holder Vyacheslav Senchenko (34-1, 23 KO’s) in an IBF welterweight title eliminator bout scheduled for 12 rounds at the Motorpoint Arena, Sheffield, Yorkshire, United Kingdom.
Brook, 27, has been talking about his fight with the soon to be 37-year-old Senchenko as being something that will show the boxing world what a good fighter is he. But I can’t see where this fight is going to do much for Brook other than proving that he can beat a fighter that the light-hitting Paulie Malignaggi manhandled last year in April. Malignaggi totally dominated Senchenko in stopping him in the 9th round. It was a mismatch. Why Brook’s promoter Eddie Hearn wanted to match him against Senchenko instead of someone a little more credible, I don’t know.
To me the Brook-Senchenko fight looks more like a stay busy fight for Brook than an IBF welterweight title eliminator. First off, Senchenko is ranked #8 by the IBF, so I’m having a hard time understanding how he was selected to fight in an IBF eliminator bout rather than all the guys ranked above him. When you see stuff like this, it kind of loses the whole meaning behind an eliminator bout. But of course this is actually a huge step up for Brook compared to his last IBF eliminator a year ago in October 2012 against Hector David Saldivia. I still don’t know why the IBF had Saldivia fighting in an eliminator given that he’d been blown out by Said Ouali in one round two years earlier and had fought nothing but little known opposition since that time; not that Ouali is well known.
Also on the card will be heavyweight prospect Anthony Joshua (1-0, 1 KO’s) facing 37-year-old journeyman Paul Butlin (14-19, 3 KO’s) in scheduled 6 round fight. Joshua’s promoter Eddie Hearn thinks that the 6’6″ Joshua will soon be a heavyweight world champion.
It’s going to be interesting to see if that actually takes place because based on how Joshua looked earlier this month in his pro debut against Emanuele Leo and how he looked in the Olympics, I’m not sure that it’s going to be possible for Joshua to ever win a World title unless he makes dramatic improvements in his power. He’s a huge fighter but he’s shooting blanks right now, and normally a fighter as as old as the 23-year-old Joshua is already has power in place.
The power is usually a starting point for someone that captured an Olympic Gold medal in the 2012 Olympics like Joshua did, but he’s missing the power altogether. Of course, there was a great deal of controversy that surrounded Joshua winning his gold medal because many people thought that Joshua was beaten in several of his four rights in the Olympics, in particular his fights against Cuban Erislandy Savon, Kazakhstan fighter, Ivan Dychko, and Italian slugger Roberto Cammarelle. Those fighters proved to be better punchers than Joshua and they appeared to land more shots, but Joshua was given the victories over them all, including the superb fighter from China Zhilei Zhang.
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