By Scott Gilfoid: Amir Khan thinks IBF welterweight champion Kell Brook came off looking like a stupid little girl recently when Brook said he wants to fight IBF/IBO/WBA middleweight champion Gennady “GGG” Golovkin at a catch-weight of 157lbs.
Khan thinks that Golovkin doesn’t know who Brook is, and he would seriously hurt the 29-year-old welterweight if ever given the chance to fight him. Both Brook and his promoter Eddie Hearn mentioned wanting to make the fight with GGG this past week at a catch-weight of 157lbs. To me, it looks like Brook is trying to get attention like the kind Amir Khan is receiving with his fight against WBC middleweight champion Saul “Canelo” Alvarez in their fight on May 7.
It’s unclear how much serious interest there is from Brook and Hearn in making that fight with Golovkin happen. The general consensus from many in the boxing world, his writer included, is that Brook and Hearn only mentioned Golovkin’s name to help increase interest in their fight tonight against Kevin Bizier (25-2, 17 KOs) on Sky Boxing at the Sheffield Arena in Sheffield, UK.
Not surprisingly, there’s not a whole heck of a lot of interest in the Brook-Bizier fight, and we’re seeing his by the fight not selling out. The fans are speaking by their lack of interest in this fight, which is considered to be a terrible mismatch.
One way of increasing interest in a dreadful mismatch like the Brook vs. Bizier fight is to name drop popular fighters like Golovkin. Hearn and Brook had a busy week, name dropping not only Golovkin, but also Danny Garcia, Tim Bradley, Manny Pacquiao and Jessie Vargas. They literally used the shotgun approach in name dropping. Whether it worked or not to help sell tickets will be found out tonight when the crowd pours in the Sheffield Arena.
“I think one thing about Kell is he’s like a little girl really,” said Khan to Fighthype.com. “If you think now about all the stuff he’s coming out now is all rubbish. Look, back to back, he’s fighting less caliber fighters, guys that are really not at his level that he shouldn’t be fighting because he’s a world champion now. He needs to be proving himself that he’s a good world champion, but he’s still going out there blaming mandatories. ‘I’ve got to fight this guy because he’s a mandatory.’ You know, he’s talking rubbish. I can’t believe he’s even coming out with comments like this. I think the whole world thinks he’s stupid for coming out with the comment ‘I’ll fight Golovkin.’ I don’t think Golovkin even knows who he is. I mean, Golovkin will think, ‘Kell who?’ So I think he’s stupid for even saying that, and his promoter Eddie Hearn coming out with a stupid statement. I think the whole of the UK, and the whole of boxing world is coming out with a laugh when he came out with that stupid statement that he’ll fight Golovkin. What was it, 150, 157? I’m not going to say anything. Look, whoever saw that video of him saying that, I think he’s stupid. Look, it takes balls first of all to take a big fight. He can’t do that to go into a fight against someone like Golovkin, who is very dangerous and can hurt him,” said Khan.
What made it seem to obvious that Brook and Hearn weren’t serious about fighting Golovkin was when they started squawking about needing a catch-weight handicap of 157lbs before they would agree to the fight. In other words, they were trying to call the shots against a much more popular fighter in Golovkin before he’d even expressed any interest whatsoever in taking the fight.
When you start setting up conditions to fight someone that has not even said a peep about you in the media, then that’s a red flag for someone that is just name dropping. Heck, Brook won’t even fight Errol Spence Jr. or Keith Thurman. If he’s not even chomping at the bit to fight either of those guys, then how in the world can you even believe that he would ever want to step inside the ring with a guy that is bigger and stronger than those two fighters like Golovkin. it would just be a terrible mismatch if Brook fought Golovkin.
It’s the wrong division, the wrong style for Brook, and the wrong guy. We saw how Carson Jones was able to rearrange Brook’s prominent beak four years ago in their first fight in 2012. Now imagine what a fighter like Golovkin would do to Brooks’ face if he got him into the ring. It would terrible to watch. I would hope for Brook’s sake that his trainer would have the white towel of surrender ready to toss into the ring the moment the fight starts getting out of hand. Brook has the wrong style to survive against someone like Golovkin.
There are welterweights that would be able to make it slightly difficult for Golovkin, guys like Thurman. A good runner like Thurman would give Golovkin some issues because he would have to chase Thurman around the ring before he eventually knocked him out. Thurman likes to throw left hooks while in retreat. Golovkin would have to eat some of Thurman’s shots in order to chop him down. However, with a guy like Brook, who moves like he’s got mechanical legs, he’s not able to move around the ring.
Brook’s movement is limited and always has been. Fortunately, for Brook, he never had to move much due to the gawd awful opposition that has been dragged into the ring to fight him by his careful promoters. Brook never had to use movement. He’s only fought one good opponent in his career in Shawn Porter, and he used nonstop clinching to keep him from throwing punches. Even in that fight, Brook should have been disqualified for his excessive clinching, but the referee working the contest has a hand’s off approach to controlling the clinching. It was like the old Wild West where anything goes when it comes to clinching, because there was no control in that fight done to keep Brook from grabbing Porter any chance he could get.
I think we’re probably going to hear more name dropping of Golovkin’s name by Brook in the future. One tip in trying to identify if Brook and Hearn are serious about the Golovkin fight is to see if they keep talking about Golovkin having to agree to a catch-weight. As long as they continue to yap about him needing to agree to a catch-weight, you can rest assured that they’re not serious about wanting to fight him.
Comments are closed.