By Scott Gilfoid: IBF welterweight champion Kell “Special K” Brook (35-0, 24 KOs) had better get his clinching skills ready because he could be in for a real tough fight next month when he faces the hard hitting Argentinian Diego Chaves (23-2-1, 19 KOs) in a 12 round affair on October 24th on Sky Box Office from the Sheffield Arena, in Sheffield, UK.
American WBO welterweight champion Tim Bradley thinks that Brook could be in for a really grueling fight when he gets inside the ring with Chaves and he sees this fight as one that could be a lot tougher than Brook expects it to be.
Bradley should know. He recently fought to a 12 round draw against Chaves last December in a fight where Bradley collapsed almost completely under the weight of Chaves’ heavy blows. Bradley has a great chin, but he was falling apart from the shots that Chaves was hitting him with.
Brook doesn’t have the same kind of chin that Bradley has in my estimation. We saw how a very average fighter in Carson Jones had Brook ready to be knocked out in their first fight in 2012. A bloody and battered Brook barely survived that fight.
“It’s a tough fight for Kell Brook. He doesn’t realize that,” said Bradley. “Diego Chaves is underrated. He has had a few opportunities and came up short but the guy can box and he can fight on the inside.”
Well, I guess Brook won’t have to worry about Chaves’ superior inside fighting skills because we’re probably going to see Brook doing a lot of holding each time Chaves works his way in close. I don’t know if Brook will clinch as many times as he did in his close win over Shawn Porter last year, but it’s possible.
If Chaves gets his attention with one of his big shots on Brook’s prominent beak, I think we’ll see Brook reverting to form by holding Chaves like mad to try and hold him off. I just there’s a good referee that can control Brook’s constant holding and do the right thing by taking points off if he gets to the same level of holding as we saw in his fight against Porter.
We can’t have Brook holding 10+ times per round and turning the fight into a wrestling match instead of an actual fight. You don’t learn anything when you watch wrestling matches like the Brook-Porter fight other than one guy just can’t seem to wrestle as good as the other guy that’s doing all the holding.
That’s why I think Chaves needs to be working hard in training camp to fight his way out of clinches because he’s probably going to need to. Once Brook starts with his holding tactics, it’s going to get really ugly in the ring with the fight getting mired down with this ugly tactic.
“He [Chaves] has good power in both hands and Chaves can mix it up,” Bradley said. “I think it’s a tough fight for Brook – but if he can get him out of there, then Brook is something special; I can tell you that much!”
Yeah, if Brook can beat Chaves without holding 24/7, then you have to give Brook respect. In other words, if Brook can beat Chaves fair and square, then that’s a big accomplishment for Brook. I mean, it won’t mean jack as far as what Brook would do if he fought some of the guys like Errol Spence, Porter, Danny Garcia or Keith Thurman, who I rate as better fighters than Chaves, but it will show that Brook can at least beat a good decent fighter without holding for a change.
“Chaves gave Keith Thurman problems and he gave myself problems and he was giving Brandon Rios problems too,” Bradley said. “I think he’s a great fighter. It’s a dangerous fight for Brook.”
Chaves would have beaten Rios if not for the referee suddenly stepping in to halt the fight in the 9th by disqualifying Chaves for throwing a phantom elbow that I never saw him throw. I watched the fight in slow motion. There was no elbow thrown by Chaves. What I did see is that Rios was on the verge of losing the fight with one round to go when the referee stepped and disqualified Chaves for throwing the phantom elbow.
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