Diego Chaves: I will be making history if I defeat an Englishman in his own country

By Boxing News - 09/02/2015 - Comments

chaves33333By Scott Gilfoid: #4 IBF Diego Chaves (23-2-1, 19 KOs) says he wants to make history when he faces undefeated and untested IBF welterweight champion Kell Brook (35-0, 24 KOs) on October 24th at the Sheffield Arena, Sheffield, UK. Chaves sees himself making history by being an Argentinean and coming into England an beating and English fighter in front of his own fans.

Chaves had better be looking to score a knockout because he is the visiting fighter, and he’s coming into Brook’s home turf. We saw how Brook won a controversial 12 round majority decision over American Carson Jones three years ago in 2012 in Sheffield.

That’s a fight where a lot of boxing fans felt that Jones should have won the fight, but Brook was given the win. Jones might have been able to KO Brook in the last 20 seconds of the fight if the referee hadn’t stopped the action to warn Jones about throwing a punch on the break. At the time of the warning, Brook was staggering around the ring taking punishment and bleeding badly from a busted nose.

“First of all, I feel that my confidence grows with this challenge, knowing that I will have to face a champion like Kell Brook in his home country in England,” Chaves said via RingTV.com. “I will be making history if I defeat an Englishman in his own country.”

Argentina and England weren’t on the best of terms from the Falkland confident 33 years ago in 1982. The two countries have since made up. The Falkland Islands are right outside of Argentina, roughly 946 miles away. England is 7311 miles away from the Falkland islands.

“This raises the stakes for me, going there as an Argentine, and as a huge underdog. We know all the bad blood that exists between Argentina and England, and this will give me much more strength,” Chaves said.

This is a good match-up for Chaves, because he’s got the punching power to meet Brook in the center of the ring and really give him problems. Unlike most of Brook’s other opponents during his career, Chaves can really punch like no tomorrow.

If Chaves needs to get motivated by thinking back to his country’s problems with England in the past, then that’s his problem, but Chaves should be able to get motivated simply by him fighting for a world title. That should be the main focus for his fight on October 24th. Chaves needs to go into this fight level-headed and not seeing red when he enters the ring.

The last thing Chaves needs is for him to be swinging wildly for the fences all night long, and get sloppy in there. Instead getting all hyped up on the history aspect, Chaves should be figuring out how he’s going to deal with Brook’s clinching – if that’s what he winds up doing in this fight.

If I’m Chaves, I’d be studying Shawn Porter’s fight against Brook last year, and then I’d like at Porter’s recent fight against Adrien Broner to show how Porter improved and learned how to defeat the clinching tactics of Broner. Believe me, if the Porter that beat Broner had fought Brook, he would have had a very, very easy time in defeating him.

The difference is Porter learned how to deal with a fighter that uses clinching to stall out the fight, which is what Brook used against Porter last year. Porter just gave up and went passive each time Brook would grab him in a clinch.

The smart thing would have been for Porter to keep throwing punches the entire time he was being held. He didn’t do that, so he enabled Brook’s behavior by letting him do this all night long. That tactic won’t work a second time if they ever fight again, which is probably why Brook’s promoter Eddie Hearn isn’t so eager to put Brook back in with Porter. He lucked out the first time, but the second time, it’ll be all Porter.

“This fight is going to be different because Brook is a fighter that is completely different to the other guys I fought,” Chaves said.

Brook is definitely different from the other guys that Chaves has fought. I don’t see Brook as being as good as guys like Keith Thurman and Brandon Rios. Tim Bradley might be better than Brook as well. All of those guys bring different things to the table compared to Brook.



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