Brook wants Danny Garcia, Pacquiao or Bradley in 2016

By Boxing News - 03/08/2016 - Comments

brook7777By Scott Gilfoid: IBF welterweight champion Kell “Special K” Brook (35-0, 24 KOs) just can’t seem to get a break. He’s been pining away for a fight against Amir Khan for the past three years, but he’s been ignored by him. In the meantime, Brook hasn’t been fighting talented enough guys to raise his profile.

You can’t blame that on Brook or you can blame it on his promoter Eddie Hearn, who has been matching hi softly ever since he took over as his promoter five years ago. Brook will be defending his IBF title against his mandatory challenger Kevin Bizier (25-2, 17 KOs) this month on March 26 at the Sheffield Arena, in Sheffield, UK.

Brook would like to have his next fight already lined up by the time he enters the ring on 3/26, and he has got three fighters in mind that he is interested in facing. Brook would like to fight WBC welterweight champion Danny Garcia, Manny Pacquiao or Tim Bradley.

Of that bunch, Bradley would have to be the more attainable fight because Garcia has not shown much inspiration as of late to face opponents in 50-50 fights. Pacquiao is about to retire next month after his April 9 fight against Bradley. It is not likely that Pacquiao will put off his retirement to fight someone like Brook, because he is not well known in the U.S, and the fight would likely not bring in many pay-per-view buys on HBO.

“After Bizier I expect something concrete quite quickly, ideally I’d like to know who it is, or that we are close to making an offer [to] when I am sat on the apron immediately after [the win over] Bizier,” Brook said to thestar.co.uk. “It has been a long road but I am excited to get rid of the mandatory and things should open up for me. We will start pushing until we get the people we want, like [Danny] Garcia or [Tim] Bradley or [Manny] Pacquiao. I would certainly be willing to travel to the US for Garcia, that’s a great fight.”

I wouldn’t hold my breath waiting for Danny Garcia or his manager Al Haymon to make a unification fight against Brook. That move would be totally alien to the type of fights that Garcia has been taking lately. Garcia has a good thing going as the WBC champion.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UD7gMUetz-g

With careful match-making to avoid the talented fighters in the division, Garcia can probably milk his WBC title for at least two or three years, maybe even longer depending on whether Haymon wants to match him against someone good. I don’t see the World Boxing Council forcing the issue by ranking a talented contender like Errol Spence at No.1 with their organization. That means that Danny Garcia is going to be able to do a lot of milking of his title. There is just no way do I see Garcia or his father Angel Garcia wanting to fight Brook. It would be too tough of a fight and I think that’s something they’re into.

If Brook is hard up for a good opponent, then he can always push to fight Errol Spence Jr. right now after he takes care of business against Chris Algieri in April. I’m sure Spence would take the fight with Brook right now rather than waiting for the fight. However, I don’t see Brook’s promoter Eddie Hearn wanting to match him against Spence. That fight is going to be forced on Brook whether he wants it or not, because once Spence beats Algieri, he’ll then be the No.1 IBF mandatory challenger.

Brook can still buy himself some time because he’ll get two voluntary defenses after he beats Bizier this month on March 26. This means that Brook care put off the Spence fight until at least the second half of 2017. By that time, Brook and Hearn will have had enough time to decide whether they want to keep the IBF title and face Spence, or chuck the title to avoid him. My guess is Brook will vacate the IBF title with the excuse that he’s moving up to 154 to go after a title against WBO junior middleweight champion Liam Smith. By moving up to 154, Brook will save himself a knockout loss to Spence.

If Brook faces Bradley, I see him losing that fight too. That’s a bad match-up for Brook because Bradley is a very good fighter. Brook wouldn’t be able to count on clinching 10+ times per round to beat a fighter like Bradley. That trick isn’t going to work. Besides that, I don’t see Bradley volunteering to fight Brook in the UK. That means that if Brook is planning on clinching all night long like he did against Porter, then he’s probably going to find it hard to win rounds. Bradley will beat Brook without any problems. The positive for Brook is he’ll get a big fight after all these years as a pro. The negative is Brook will lose the fight and his career will take a major hit.

Brook turns 30 on May 3, and he’s starting to run out of time on his career in terms of getting a big fight before he’s over the hill. If Brook can’t get a big money fight soon, then might want to think about looking in the direction of getting another promoter. If he were with someone like Dibella Entertainment, he might be able to get some big fights. However, it would still be a long haul for Brook, because he would need to build a fan base in the United States. That would take a while to do, and Brook would need to fight quality guys to do that. He couldn’t become a star in the U.S by fighting guys like Bizier, Frankie Gavin, Jo Jo Dan, Alvaro Robles, Matthew Hatton, Vyacheslav Senchenko, Carson Jones, Lovemore N’Dou, Philip Kotey, Rafal Jackiewicz and Luis Galarza. These are some of the fighters that Brook has been through his career in the last six years. I still can’t believe Brook didn’t raise his game a long time ago. It looks to me like Brook has had a failure to launch, and now he’s paying the price by not getting the big names that he wants. To get the big names, you need to fight quality guys fairly in your career. You can’t wait until your 29 and a paper champion, saying ‘I want a big fight. Someone fight me.’ That’s not how it goes.



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