By Scott Gilfoid: Unbeaten welterweight talent Errol Spence’s promoter Lou Dibella says he doubts that Kell Brook will return to the 147lb division to defend his International Boxing Federation title after he faces IBF/IBO/WBA/WBC middleweight champion Gennady “GGG” Golovkin in their fight next month on September 10 at the O2 Arena in London, England.
Dibella says he’s hearing that Brook likely won’t try and come back down to welterweight after the Golovkin fight. However, Dibella says that if Brook does choose to come back down to defend his IBF belt, he’ll have as many problems against Spence as he will against Golovkin at 160.
No matter what happens in the 30-year-old Brook’s fight against Golovkin next month, Brook will need to make a decision quickly whether he’s going to remain at 160 or move back down to the welterweight division to defend his IBF strap. The IBF is going to need to hear Brook’s decision quickly, because they’ll be ready to order Spence to fight for the vacant IBF title against the contender that is selected by the IBF.
“Part of me would like to see Broom come back down to 47, because I think he’s going to have just as much trouble in his own weight class as he is in going to up fight. From what I’m hearing, it’s more likely he’s not going to return to the weight class, but he does have the option. So at the moment, you have to look at Brook as the champion. He has to make his decision fairly quickly after the Golovkin fight where he’s going to go from there. If he decides he’s moving up to 160 or 154, then the IBF will order the vacant title fight,” said Dibella.
When Spence was asked whether he would accommodate Brook by agreeing to fight him at 154 or 160 so that they could make the fight still happen, Spence said, “No, it would have to be at 147.”
So there it is. If Brook wants the fight with Spence, he’s going to need to come back down to 147, because he’s not going to move up to middleweight just to fight him.
I do agree with Dibella that Spence will give Brook as many problems as Golovkin. In fact, I think Spence will give Brook even more problems to Brook than Golovkin, because Spence is more of a body puncher than GGG. Golovkin is an excellent body puncher, to be sure, but he mostly head hunts in his fights. If you watch Golovkin’s fights, he rarely goes to the body because he doesn’t want to get caught with anything. Spence is different. He goes after his opponent’s body half the time, and that makes him a much bigger threat to Brook, because he likes to make it difficult for his opponents to land head shots. But with Spence throwing to the body of Brook, it will give him no chance to avoid getting hit because there’s no way he’s going to be able to avoid getting nailed by body shots unless he runs from Spence.
What makes it tougher for Brook in facing Spence is that he’ll need to do it after coming down from the middleweight division after a hard fight against Golovkin. So we’re talking about Brook having to struggle even more with making the 147lb weight limit than he did previously, because he’ll have to take off a ton of weight to get back down to the division.
When a fighter bulks up the way that Brook is doing, it makes it very hard for them to get back down in weight to where they were before. Further, Brook is probably going to take a royal beating at the hands of Golovkin on September 10, so it might be hard for him to come back and fight a wrecking machine like Spence in his first fight back.
You don’t like to see fighters take consecutive grueling fights, because it tends to wear them down quickly. Whatever is left of Brook after the Golovkin fight, I doubt that he’ll be at the full 100 percent capacity that he was before he moved up in weight to face the Kazakhstan fighter. I’m just saying.
We might be lucky if Brook is at 60 percent of what he was before moving up to middleweight and taking a beating. There’s also the motivation angle. Brook will make a ton of cash for the Golovkin fight. It might be as high as $6 million that Brook brings in. Yeah, a lot of Brook’s earnings will be taxed by the British government, but he’ll still end up with a large wad of cash after the taxes are taken out.
Just how motivated Brook will be once he realizes that he’s rich is the big question. When you suddenly have enough money to never work again, I think it changes a person. I wouldn’t be surprised if Brook looks at the Spence fight and says to himself, ‘I don’t need this trouble. Spence is too talented, and I’m too rich to bother getting into the ring with this young buzz-saw. I think I’ll just stay at 160 and go after Billy Joe Saunders.’ I think we’ll see Brook’s motivation changing after he fights Golovkin, because he won’t need to move down and face Spence.
I’m not sure whether Brook was ever motivated for that fight to begin with. Brook has been eager to take the soft fight against Amir Khan for a long, long time. That’s a safe fight for Brook where he’d get a big payday. But against Spence, it wouldn’t be an easy fight, and there would be a high chance that Brook would get knocked out and badly exposed for the second time.
It’s one thing for Brook to get smashed by Golovkin, but another thing entirely to get blasted out by someone from his own division in Spence. Brook will get cover for getting knocked out by Golovkin due to him being a middleweight and the best fighter in the division.
Brook won’t get the same pass from the boxing world if he moves back down to welterweight and gets obliterated by Spence too. The fans will likely skewer Brook, questioning whether he was ever any good to begin with. They’ll then look at Brook’s 12-year record filled with weak opposition and likely conclude that he padded his record his entire career with fodder and was never that good to begin with.
Spence will be fighting this Sunday against Leonard Bundu (33-1-2, 12 KOs) in an IBF welterweight eliminator bout at the Ford Amphitheater in Coney Island in Brooklyn, New York. The fight will be televised on Premier Boxing Champions on NBC. The winner fights for the IBF title against Brook or someone selected by the IBF if Brook can’t or won’t move back down to 147 to defend his IBF strap. This is going to be great fight to see how well Spence can deal with a good fighter in the 147lb division. There are some who feel that Bundu is good enough to beat WBC champion Danny Garcia. If Spence can beat Bundu with ease, then it would tell the boxing world that he’s ready to take over the 147lb division. Spence is seen as the guy that replaces Floyd Mayweather Jr.