No truth whatsoever of me being injured I'm fighting fit and can't wait to go! #AndTheNew

— Kell Brook (@SpecialKBrook) July 23, 2014

By Scott Gilfoid: With a little over three weeks to go before August 16th fight between challenger Kell Brook (32-0, 22 KOs) and IBF welterweight champion Shawn Porter (24-0-1, 15 KOs), Brook took to twitter to address the rumors of him being injured and on possibly pulling out of their fight at the StubHub Center, in Carson, California, USA.

Who knows how the rumors popped up about Brook being injured once again, but obviously it’s a legitimate concern given Brook’s track record in the past. Brook was scheduled to fight for the IBF title last year against former champion Devon Alexander, but twice Brook suffered injuries while in training for the bout. Alexander finally just gave up waiting for Brook to be healthy enough to make it into the ring so that he could get his mandatory title defense out of the way.

We still have a little over three weeks, so you can’t know for sure whether Brook or even Porter will make it to the finish like to face each other in the ring. But you have to bet that if Brook goes down with an injury here, he’s likely going to have to get in line and wait until Porter gets 2-3 title defenses out of the way before giving Brook another chance at this belt.

I’m not sure what happened with Brook last time with the injuries. It could be a number of things that caused him to physically break down in training. The fact that this kind of thing hasn’t happened in the past when he was facing fodder opposition suggests that it might be a stress thing. Brook might be too keyed up when training for big fights, and this might be the cause of him suffering injuries left and right.

Some guys just get nervous and fall to pieces or overdo it during training camp. The other thing that might be hurting Brook is his weight. He’s a big welterweight, and he arguably should be fighting at junior middleweight against the likes of Saul “Canelo” Alvarez and Erislandy Lara. But facing those guys would give Brook no advantages in size and power, and he’d have to find another way of winning. I mean, Brook couldn’t just come out and trying and move Canelo or Lara down, because they’d cut him to ribbons with their power.

Provided that Brook actually gets to the fight with Porter without coming up lame in the next 3 ½ weeks of training camp, Brook is going to need to fight at a higher level than he ever has before.

The guys that Brook has been fighting during his career – Matthew Hatton, Rafal Jackiewicz, Luis Galarza and Alvaro Robles – are so far away from Porter in terms of talent that Brook could be in shock when he gets in the ring on August 16th and finds out how much more talented Porter is from the guys that Brook has been feasting on.

That’s why it’s important for fighters to nudge their promoters when it becomes painfully obvious that they’re matching them up with fluff competition. In Brook’s case, he has nothing to show for his 10 years as a pro but one long list of weak competition. The result of that weak opposition is that Brook is likely going to be out of his class when he gets into the ring with Porter on August 16th, because he won’t have had the preparation to get him ready for that fight.