By Dan Ambrose: Trainer Abel Sanchez believes that Kell “Special K” Brook (36-0, 25 KOs) is going to need to use movement on September 10 if he doesn’t want to get knocked out by his fighter Gennady “GGG” Golovkin (35-0, 32 KOs) at the O2 Arena in London, England.
Sanchez doesn’t know for a fact whether Brook can hurt Golovkin, but he does know that Triple G can hurt him if he can land his shots. That’s why Sanchez thinks that Brook is going to need to use a lot of movement in this fight if he doesn’t want to get knocked out.
However, Sanchez has doubts whether Brook can do a lot of moving with his current weight of 176lbs. He believes that it’s going to be tough on Brook to move for long in the fight with him carrying around that kind of weight.
“If the weight is any indication and he sticks around I think it’s a 5-6 round fight,” said Sanchez to Fighthub.com. “Anybody who stands in front of Golovkin is getting knocked out. Anybody who stands within distance of Golovkin is getting knocked out. Anybody who doesn’t move in front of Golovkin is getting knocked out. And if they can’t hurt Gennady, they’re in trouble.”
We saw Matthew Macklin and Martin Murray making it a point to run from Golovkin for in their fights with him in the past, and it didn’t work. They both were not competitive and they ended up getting knocked out anyway. Macklin lost his only real chance of winning by not standing and trading with Golovkin.
Murray didn’t have the punching power to begin with to stand an trade with GGG, but he could have at least tried to box him to maybe get lucky if the fight made it to the scorecards. Murray tried to use his size advantage early to trade with Golovkin, but when that didn’t work; he switched to Plan B by using a lot of holding to smother his offense.
Golovkin then adapted to stop Murray’s holding by taking a step back each time he tried to initiate a clinch. Murray then switched to Plan C, which was running, and that enabled him to make it to the 11th round before Golovkin knocked him out.
“By him weighing 176 I think they’re trying to bulk up, trying to be strong, and I think he may want to stick around and fight Gennady,” said Sanchez about Brook. “He may not move as much because he’ll be a lot heavier. I know they’ll have a game plan…that just tells me they could want to go, not so much toe-to-toe, but just not as much movement as they’ve done in the past.”
Brook and his promoter Dominic Ingle have probably come to the conclusion that movement won’t work in this fight, because it’s not worked in the past for Golovkin’s opponents. He’s too good at cutting off the ring for movement to work on a consistent enough basis to get a victory. At the same time, this fight is going to be seen by thousands upon thousands of boxing fans both in the UK and worldwide, it’s not a good idea for Brook to be seen running around the ring for 12 rounds looking to avoid the battle against Golovkin. That kind of approach to the fight would make Brook like a hunted mouse, and it would hurt him in the long run in terms of causing him lose fans.
If Brook is going to lose the fight anyway, it’s better for him to look like a hero than a chicken being chased by a farmer. If Brook is seen losing in a ‘last stand’ type of fight, he would be viewed as a hero despite him getting knocked out. Above all, I don’t think there’s any tricks in Ingle’s cupboard that he can pull out for Brook to win this fight like he did in the Shawn Porter fight.
Brook would have lost that fight if he had to actually fight Porter, but he was able to clinch nonstop throughout the fight to limit Porter’s ability to throw punches. With the referee choosing not to control Brook’s clinching, he did it every round over and over again. Ingle can’t use that trick for the Golovkin fight, because he’s too smart for a primitive tactic like that to work. Ingle probably doesn’t have anything else that has any real hope of working against a fighter like Golovkin. That’s why it appears that he’s just going to have Brook bulk up as much as possible and hope that he can outslug him with his size on September 10.
“I don’t know if Kell can hurt Golovkin but I know Golovkin will be able to hurt him. So it’s just a matter of who is able to land the first significant punch – we’ll see how it goes from there,” said Sanchez. “It won’t affect us, if it affects somebody it will be the judges because 20,000 people screaming Kell’s name if he does something could influence them. But I don’t think it goes to a decision,” said Sanchez.
It’s going to be difficult for Brook to be able to hurt Golovkin unless he stands in front of him and fights in a stationary manner. Brook isn’t a big puncher when he fights on the move like he was doing against Porter. If Brook does choose to stand and fight Golovkin, then he’s going to be opening himself to getting hit back with some really big shots in this fight. That’s where Brook is going to need a good chin to take the heavy punches from Golovkin, because if he can’t handle his power, then he won’t last long.
The crowd at the O2 Arena could influence the judges in theory, but if the fight doesn’t go to the scorecards, then it won’t matter. The judges can give Brook every round of the fight, but if he gets knocked out in the 12th round, it won’t matter what their scores were. They might as well have been doodling because the scores won’t have any bearing on the outcome of the fight. The crowd will likely cause the judges to give rounds to Brook if the rounds are remotely close. It’s unclear if they will be though if Brook chooses to move or even if he chooses to stand and trade.