By Scott Gilfoid: Abel Sanchez, the trainer for IBF/IBO/WBC middleweight champion Gennady “GGG” Golovkin (35-0, 32 KOs), says he expects his next opponent welterweight Kell “Special K” Brook (36-0, 25 KOs) to be looking to frustrate Triple G when the two of them face each other on September 10 at the O2 Arena in London, UK.
Sanchez thinks Brook’s training team will give him instructions not to stand in front of Golovkin for any length of time in this fight. Sanchez thinks Brook’s team will have him looking to win a decision over Golovkin by using movement, fast punches, and other tricks to somehow win a decision. Sanchez does not see Brook looking to stand in the pocket with Golovkin in this fight, because he feels it would end badly for the British fighter if he did.
I think it’s pretty obvious that Brook will be looking to win the fight against Golovkin using any trick in the book. I don’t think Brook will care that he won’t be able to stand and trade with Golovkin to try and bang him out like he’s done against 25 other opponents in his career.
The guys that Brook has knocked out during his career have largely been mediocre to dreadful opposition. We haven’t seen Brook ever stop a quality welterweight. In fact, Brook has only fought one good welterweight in his career in my view and that was Shawn Porter. Brook used holding all night long to win a very, very ugly decision. Brook basically held Porter every time he got in punching range.
You’ve got assume that if Brook was willing to hold Porter all night long to ugly up the fight to win a close decision, he’ll try a similar trick against Golovkin. It might not be constant holding that Brook uses, but I see some kind of frustrating, spoiling tactic used by Brook. I mean, Brook can’t just fight Golovkin, because the Kazakhstan fighter has unreal punching power, an he’ll literally take Brook apart piece by piece and leave him in a pile of rubble on the canvas. There’s nothing special about Brook’s chin or his ability to take body shots. He’s just as human as the 32 guys that Golovkin has knocked out in the past. I think Brook won’t be able to take the punishment that some of Golovkin’s past opponents like Curtis Stevens took. I’m just saying. Brook’s beard is very, very questionable, as we saw in his first fight against Carson Jones in 2012.
“We’ve got to spar with faster, speedy guys with movement,” said Sanchez to Dontae’s Boxing Nation “If you remember Ray Leonard’s fight with Marvin Hagler, how did he beat Hagler? He didn’t out-punch him. He didn’t knock him out. He didn’t hurt him, but he did out-speed him. The one thing that we as a coaching staff have to prepare for is a guy that his brain trust knows he can’t stand in front of Golovkin. They’re going to have to box him. They’re going to have to move on him. They’re going to have to boom-boom, [land] a couple of shots and frustrate him, and hopefully win a decision. So that makes it a little difficult to find the guy that is durable enough [in sparring] that will give us the kid of speed to be able to give us that kind of look. Small middleweights are what I’m going to have to bring in in to try and emulate the speed. Small middleweight and junior middleweights to try and emulate that hand speed and movement. I know they’re going to have to try and formulate a plan so where they don’t have to stand in front of Golovkin. I look forward to try and anticipate what they try to do. There’s a lot more pressure on us to look good, Hopefully, Golovkin builds up a big enough name that the other guys [in England] will comes to the table. Billy Joe Saunders wanted too much money that it wasn’t possible. He wanted more money than Golovkin. That’s impossible to do. All we can do is get the best available guy at the moment, because we can’t lose the date,” said Sanchez.
I think Golovkin needs sparring partners that use the old ‘punch and grab technique,’ because I see that as Plan-A for Brook. I believe Brook will go back to the same plan that he used in his only fight against a quality opponent in his career in his fight against Shawn Porter. Without the punch and hold technique, Brook would have lost badly to Porter, because he didn’t have an inside game to compete with him. If the Plan-A [Punch and grab technique] doesn’t work for Brook, then I see him moving onto to Plan-B, which will be a mix of jabbing and throwing pot shots from the outside. Brook will make sure he stays on the move constantly and changes directions over and over again to try and confuse Golovkin. Yeah, it’ll look ugly, but he’s got no other choice.
Brook can’t just stand and fight because he’ll get obliterated. If Golovkin is able to neutralize Brook’s hit and move technique, then I see Brook having no other choice but to revert to Plan-C, which is just to stand and fight him in a Custer’s last stand type of approach. Brook will essentially be fighting tooth and nail at that point and hoping for the best. I don’t see it going well for him, but he won’t have a choice at that point. There won’t be any more options for him. I mean, I doubt that Brook will revert to fouling in hoping to throw Golovkin off his game by body slamming, hitting low and/or throwing rabbit punches nonstop. I would hope that Brook doesn’t take it there to try and win the fight, because it would be so ugly if he goes primitive on Golovkin.
“It got to the point in the middle of this week where it was impossible because they [the Eubanks] were impossible to deal with,” said Sanchez to Dontae’s Boxing Nation. “Eddie [Hearn] was the one that suggested Kell to Tom [Loeffler] because Kell had mentioned six months ago that he wanted to fight Golovkin. Obviously, it was good enough [deal] for the best welterweight in the world other than Errol Spence, but he accepted it. September was the next slot for us. If he didn’t take it, then we were screwed until the end of the year. Golovkin has to fight. Erislandy Lara can’t bring what Kell Brook brings. Remember, it’s also economics too. Erislandy Lara is going to want so much money that it’s not feasible; more money than Golovkin. Golovkin’s not making the kind of money yet where he can pay a million or a million and a half to an opponent. Now if he was a world champion and we were going into their hometown and a lot of revenue is coming from that side, then it makes it feasible. You haven’t heard Erislandy Lara’s people offering Golovkin anything, so they’re just talking. If they’re serious about it, then they can put the money together as it was put in England to make something happen. It can’t just be on our side. It has to be on their side too. If we go deal with someone like Lara for one month, then we don’t have a fight. We lost the venue. We lose everything. What is important is Golovkin fights. Kell took the fight on two days’ notice. I’ve got to give him kudos,” said Sanchez.