(Photo credit: Esther Lin/Showtime) By Scott Gilfoid: Matchroom Sport promoter Eddie Hearn is confident that his fighter Kell Brook (32-0, 22 KOs) won’t freeze and fall apart mentally in the moment tomorrow night when he gets inside the squared circle with IBF welterweight champion Shawn Porter (24-0-1, 15 KOs) at the StubHub Center in Carson, California.
Hearn thinks that Brook get a case of the nerves in this fight because he’s studied him well and he doesn’t see him as the type of fight that will get intimidated by the magnitude of the moment.
Hearn was pleased to see that Porter had to strip down completely to make weight during Friday’s weigh-in. Hearn says he thinks Porter looked a little flabby to him and that’s something he sees as a positive for Brook.
“Kell is one of those who rises to the occasions,” Hearn said to IFL TV. “Some people get to a big moment a crumble. He will not crumble. I’m so confident. You saw Shawn Porter down to the towel, and he looked a little fleshy as well. It’s a better sign than him looking absolutely shredded at 147, turning up with his pants on. This is s really, really, really big fight. This is a fight that will determine the future of the two fighters in terms of top fights. So I’m excited. One of the reasons why I’m so excited is because Kell’s in the deep end. I’ve wanted to see him in the deep end for so long, and now we’re going to see how special he is.”
I can’t say I agree with Hearn that Porter looked fleshy. He always looks like that when he fights, but I’m not surprised that Hearn is finding that out now because he’s obviously not been traveling to the U.S to see Porter fight in person. Hearn is now seeing Porter live, but it’s likely that he’s never seen him in person until the fight was signed.
We really don’t know whether Brook will fall apart or not. I don’t think it’s important whether Brook crumbles mentally or not. Porter has so much talent that it doesn’t really matter whether Brook fights at his best.
The fact is Brook is taking a major, major step up in class, and fighters that take that much of a step up generally fail especially when they’ve been fighting for 10 long years and never fought anyone good before. Brook is taking too much of a step up against a guy with the wrong style for him.
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