By Scott Gilfoid: Matchroom Sport promoter Eddie Hearn is taking the shotgun approach to trying to get his fighter IBF welterweight champion Kell Brook (35-0, 24 KOs) a big money fight for the summer. Hearn has targeted the following fighters for Brook for the 32,000 seat Bramall Lane in Sheffield: Gennady Golovkin, Manny Pacquiao vs. Tim Bradley winner, Miguel Cotto, Danny Garcia and Jessie Vargas.
Hearn says the fighters he wants the most for Brook is Pacquiao and Bradley. He would also like Cotto, as he says HBO approached him about fighting Cotto on June 18, but he thinks Cotto is interested in fighting someone else. As for the Golovkin fight, Hearn says he spoke with Golovkin’s promoter Tom Loeffler about the two fighters facing each other at a catch-weight of 157lbs.
“I’ve also in touch with Tom Loeffler, Gennady Golovkin’s manager and promoter, regarding the possibility of fighting Golovkin in a catchweight contest at 157lbs,” said Hearn to the dailystar.co.uk.
That would be an even worse mismatch than the Saul “Canelo” Alvarez vs. Amir Khan fight in my view. Brook can’t move very well around the ring, and he wouldn’t be able to escape Golovkin’s pressure. If Brook tried to clinch his way to a victory like he did against Shawn Porter, Golovkin would step back a foot and nail him with head shots. We saw Martin Murray try the old nonstop clinching bit in his fight against Golovkin last year, and it didn’t work.
It worked initially for Murray, but then Golovkin made adjustments by stepping back a foot each time Murray would reach for him to clinch. Golovkin would then nail Murray with a head shot to show him that he wasn’t going to be able to clinch nonstop against him. After a few rounds of getting nailed in the head when attempting to clinch, Murray finally seemed to realize that it wasn’t going to work to try and use nonstop holding to keep Golovkin from blasting him apart. At that point, Murray started running, which didn’t work either unfortunately for him.
Brook would literally have to stay in the pocket and slug with Golovkin, because if he tries to hold or run, it won’t work and he’ll just get slaughtered in an embarrassing manner. In other words, it’ll be much better for Brook to go down with the ship in a heroic manner rather than looking to spoil and still getting blasted to smithereens by GGG. I’m just saying. That’s what I would have Brook do if I were his trainer. Do I see him doing that against GGG? Nope. I see Brook reverting to form and using his old playbook that he used for the Shawn Porter fight by trying to clinch nonstop for 12 rounds to keep from getting brained. This will not work against Golovkin, as I said. Golovkin will step back each time Brook reaches out to hug him and then blast him in the head. Either Brook will get a hint that clinching won’t work, or he’ll get taken out in mid-hug. I hope for Brook’s sake he doesn’t try to clinch his way to a win, because it would be so embarrassing to see him getting thrashed while sloppily trying to hug Golovkin all night.
I don’t think Golovkin will agree to fight Bradley at a catch-weight, as he’s already said that the only fighter that he would ever agree to come down in weight for is Floyd Mayweather Jr. at 154. You can’t call that a catch-weight though, because Golovkin was going to come down to junior middleweight to fight at the upper limit for that division at 154.
Golovkin was willing to move up to the full weight for a fight against Carl Froch at super middleweight, but unfortunately, he retired. As such, I don’t think Golovkin would see a fight against Brook as being big enough for him to entertain the idea of a catch-weight of 157, but you never know.
If Hearn can guarantee that a fight between Brook and Golovkin can sellout a large stadium in the UK, then it’s possible that Golovkin might Brook the catch-weight handicap of 157. Of course, if Golovkin agrees to 157 for a fighter like Brook, who isn’t well-known in the U.S, then you can bet that WBC middleweight champion Saul “Canelo” Alvarez will likely use this as an excuse to ask for a catch-weight of 155lbs for a fight against Golovkin. I don’t think Golovkin wants to give Canelo that catch-weight due to it being a potential hardship for him to melt down to the catch-weight.
What could make a Golovkin-Brook fight difficult to make is the fact that it wouldn’t be a PPV worthy fight in the U.S. It might be PPV worthy in the UK, but definitely not in the U.S. If HBO put Golovkin vs. Brook on PPV in the States, I wouldn’t be surprised if it didn’t even break 50,000 buys. Believe me, that’s not good. Those are dreadful numbers, and even lower than the 100,000 PPV buys that the Golovkin vs. David Lemieux fight was. A fight between Golovkin and Brook would be completely dependent on the UK PPV numbers and the numbers from the gate.
I don’t know if it would be worth it for Golovkin if it wouldn’t sell in the United States on PPV. If Brook had been fighting in the U.S for the past four to five years like Golovkin, he might have a big fan base by now if he were fighting high quality opposition. But with Brook fighting in the UK every time, he’s not built up a fan base in the U.S.
The fans who know of Brook in the U.S are hardcore boxing fans, and they mostly know him from his fights against overmatched opposition like Jo Jo Dan, Frankie Gavin, Kevin Bizier, Vyacheslav Senchenko, Alvaro Roble, Matthew Hatton, Lovemore Ndou, Hector Saldivia, Carson Jones, Luis Galarza, Rafael Jackiewitz, Philip Kotey, Michael Jennings, Krzysztof Bienias and Michael Lomax. Sadly, those are pretty much all the guys that Brook has faced in the last seven years with the exception of Shawn Porter, who Brook held for 12 rounds in their terrible to watch fight in 2014.
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