Marquez: Golovkin is a tough fight for Brook

By Boxing News - 07/11/2016 - Comments

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By Scott Gilfoid: Former four division world champion Juan Manuel Marquez sees Kell Brook (36-0, 25 KOs) as having a tough time with IBF/IBO/WBA/WBC middleweight champion Gennady “GGG” Golovkin (35-0, 32 KOs) in their fight on September 10. Marquez thinks that Golovkin’s superior size and punching power will make it hard for Brook to endure 12 rounds against him. Marquez notes that Brook has an elusive style of fighting, but he’s not sure that he’ll be able to handle the power from Golovkin.

Brook, 30, will be moving up in weight from the welterweight division to take on Golovkin at the O2 Arena in London, UK. Brook won’t have it as bad compared to a true welterweight, because he’s really more of a junior middleweight that melts down to fight lighter guys at welterweight.

Having a weight advantage against the welterweights has helped Brook find success in his career. In the case of the Golovkin fight, the junior middleweight-sized Brook will need to move up in weight one division to take him on.

It’s going to be very tough on Brook, because even if he was in the same weight class as Golovkin, he would still not have the same punching power or boxing skills as him.

Golovkin hits harder than the other middleweights in the division, and his technical skills at second to no one. Brook hasn’t showed the kind of technical boxing skills that we’ve seen routinely from Triple G during his career.

“It’s a difficult fight; Brook has an elusive style, speed, but the important thing here is the difference in weight, are two divisions, and it is not facing an easy opponent,” said Marquez to ESPN Deportes. “GGG is a fighter who throws punches with of a lot of power. It is a tough fight for Kell Brook.”

It’s a mismatch on paper. Brook doesn’t have the kind of power to compete with Golovkin. Brook can try to move around the ring for 12 rounds and look to tie Golovkin up at any chance he can get, but that probably won’t be nearly enough for him to slow him down in a significant way. The movement and holding by Brook may end up a waste of time and energy. Brook is not going to beat Golovkin by slowing the fight down to a crawl. Golovkin is too good at fighting on the inside, and he cuts off the ring well.

“Speed is important [for Brook], but in is throwing punches with speed, you have to withstand the shocks and blows from Gennady Golovkin,” said Marquez. “I think we must see that Brook has to carry a super conditioning to hold the fight for 12 rounds of the way he wants by way of speed and combinations of punches, ” said Marquez.

Brook isn’t that fast of hand. He might have a little bit of an advantage in terms of hand speed, but not nearly enough for him to get the better of a guy like Golovkin. Even if Brook did have much better hand speed, he would still be getting tagged with tremendous shots to the head and body. Golovkin would time Brook the way slower fighters do against faster guys. Speed only helps a fighter up to a point. When fast guys face huge punchers with good chins, then it becomes a situation where they either run or they get blasted out.

The Terry Norris vs. Julian Jackson fight is a good example of that. Norris moved up from welterweight to fight the knockout artist Jackson at junior middleweight. Norris’ speed gave Jackson problems in the 1st round. In the 2nd round, Jackson started to walk though Norris’s quick shots to punish him with tremendous shots. Jackson eventually knocked Norris clean out with a huge right hand to the head. I hate to say it, but I see the same thing happening to Brook. He might be a little faster than Golovkin, but he’s going to get caught one time too many in the early rounds and blasted out. Holding nonstop won’t help Brook. I’ve Brook’s trainer, I would be ready to throw in the towel when the fight gets out of hand so that he doesn’t out cold after getting nailed by one of Golovkin’s big shots.

If you look at Brook’s fight against the smaller Shawn Porter in 2014, Brook used movement, jabbing, pot shotting and holding to keep from being overwhelmed by him. If Brook had just stood and fought, he would have had a lot of problems because Porter had the better hand speed and was the superior fighter on the inside.

Brook chose to tie Porter up frequently. However, the 5’7” Porter was giving away two inches in height to the 5’9” Brook, and Porter didn’t know how to deal with being tied up all night long. Porter had never fought a fighter before that used holding to shut down his offense the way that Brook did. Golovkin has a big advantage because he knows how to defeat clinching. That strategy won’t work for Brook. He’ll have to either run or stand and fight. Running doesn’t work against Golovkin because he cuts off the ring immediately against his fleeing opponents.

The fight could come down to whether Brook can beat Golovkin at his own game by standing and slugging with him. If Brook chooses to hold excessively or run, those are dead end streets for him. It’s the wrong tool against the wrong guy. Brook can’t go back to the toolkit that he used for the Porter fight and expect to try the same tricks against Golovkin, because those primitive tricks won’t likely work.

Golovkin has fought guys that clinch nonstop, and he’s fought runners before. Those things don’t work against him. The only fighter that ever gave Golovkin problems during his career was Kassim Ouma in 2011, and he did it by standing and fighting him. Ouma didn’t try to game the system by holding over times per round and hoping the referee would turn a blind eye to the excessive grabbing. Ouma didn’t run. He stood and fought Golovkin and he gave him a lot of problems in that fight.