By Scott Gilfoid: Kell Brook’s 4th round TKO win over former WBA welterweight champion Vyacheslav Senchenko last night appears to have planted some ideas into his head because he’s now targeting Amir Khan and Adrien Broner. The confidence that Brook gained from beating the #8 IBF, #11 WBA seems to have him feeling like he’s not only ready to face Khan and Broner, but beat them as well.
Brook said via Sky Sports “I’ve arrived. I want Broner. I want Khan. I want the massive fights…This new kid, Broner, who talks trash and pretends to be something he isn’t, he can also get it.”
Brook says he’s “arrived” now that he’s beaten Senchenko. I don’t that this is the fight that I would consider to be a statement type of a fight. I mean, I think I remember Senchenko being pounded last year and stopped by Paulie Malignaggi in 9 rounds. That to me is enough for Brook’s victory over Senchenko to be totally meaningless. What Brook accomplished last night was beating a former WBA paper champion that had already been exposed by the feather-fisted Malignaggi. There was nothing that Brook accomplished at all win that win other than showing that his chin is suspect after being staggered by Senchenko at one point.
Brook proved that he can beat a fighter that his promoter Eddie Hearn carefully picked out. This wasn’t Keith Thurman, Marcos Maidana or Ruslan Provodnikov. This was Senchenko, and a victory over him means zero. Brook is right back where he started from with empty victories over the likes of Matthew Hatton, Rafal Jackiewicz, Carson Jones and Hector David Saldivia. We’re still waiting for Brook’s first real win of his career because you can’t count Senchenko, at least not unless you’re not aware of the better fighters in the division. If this is the fight you’ve ever seen in boxing, then you might think that Brook accomplished something. But if you saw the guys that Senchenko beat – Motoki Sasaki, Charlie Navarro and Marco Antonio Avendano – while he was the WBA champion and the guy he beat to become the WBA champion – Yuriy Nuzhnenko – then you’ll realize that Brook didn’t do anything last night. All he did was beat another easy mark put in front of him by his promoter Hearn.
The good news is that Brook will finally get a real fight when he faces IBF champion Devon Alexander next year. The bad news is that Brook will likely have to fight Alexander in the United States for that fight, and that he’s going to have major problems with Alexander’s speed, power and defensive skills. This is not just a little jump up from the likes of Senchenko and Matthew Hatton for Brook, this is a stratospheric jump up in quality and there’s no way that Brook will be ready for that fight. Instead of Brook being put in with another soft opponent in Senchenko, Hearn should have moved him up a level against someone like Maidana, Keith Thurman or Jesus Soto Karass. We could have seen what would happen when those guys started bouncing big right hands off of Brook’s chin instead of just standing there the way that Senchenko was last night.