Brook thinks he and Thurman deserve Mayweather fight

By Boxing News - 06/22/2015 - Comments

brook5433By Scott Gilfoid: IBF welterweight champion Kell Brook (35-0, 24 KOs) figures that he and WBA champion Keith Thurman (25-0, 21 KOs) both have done more than enough with their careers to deserve a big money fight against WBA/WBC/WBO 147lb champion Floyd Mayweather Jr. in September of this year.

Brook feels that the two of them are being considered by Mayweather for his last fight of his career on September 12th. However, Mayweather hasn’t said a thing about wanting to fight Thurman or Brook.

It’s hard to understand where Brook gets the belief that he and Thurman are being considered when Mayweather hasn’t been talking about either of them at all. Mayweather usually drops hints about the guys that he’s looking to fight for his pay-per-view bouts on Showtime, but he’s not done that with Thurman or Brook.

Heck, those guys might as well be invisible because Mayweather isn’t even bringing their names up at all, period. The fighters that Mayweather has been talking about wanting to fight next is Karim Mayfield and Andre Berto.

“We’re all in the mix and we all want the fight but I believe myself and Keith Thurman are the best fights for Floyd Mayweather,” Brook said via Skysports.com. “We are both natural and big welterweights. We’re unbeaten and we’re coming for it, so for me, Thurman and I stand out.”

I have a lot of respect for the 26-year-old Thurman as a fighter, but to be honest, he’s still very, very unproven at this point due to the weak opposition he’s faced. The same thing with Brook. Both guys have fought largely weak opposition their entire careers.

The best guy that Thurman has fought thus far is Robert Guerrero, who doesn’t have much punching power, and he’s fighting four divisions out of his best weight class. Thurman looked decent against Guerrero, but nowhere near as good as Mayweather did. The rest of the guys that Thurman has fought have been largely 2nd tier. Look at Thurman’s next fight against Luis Collazo. What is Thurman doing fighting a guy like Collazo? It’s a no-win situation for Thurman because Collazo was recently beaten badly by Amir Khan.

Brook has only had one good opponent during his long 11-year pro career in his fight against Shawn Porter last year, and Brook stunk up the joint by using the Adrien Broner style of fighting Porter by holding the entire fight.

You take away all the awful looking holding that Brook got away with against Porter, and I think we would have seen Porter winning an easy fight. You’ve got to figure that Porter would have dominated Brook on the inside all night long, but instead we saw Brook clinching Porter 10 plus times per round, and the referee just letting go on without lifting a finger to stop the holding. If for nothing else, the referee should have penalized Brook multiple times for the sake of the fight fans who were forced to watch the fight and put up with all the holding that Brook did.

As much as I like Brook and Thurman, I don’t see either of them deserving a shot at Mayweather in September. The same for Amir Khan. I don’t think he rates. Khan has had too many safe fights in the last three years, too many weak punchers, and too many poor performances.



Comments are closed.