Mayweather: We’re waiting for Golovkin to move up

By Boxing News - 09/17/2016 - Comments

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By Dan Ambrose: Superstar boxer Floyd Mayweather Jr. says he thinks middleweight champion Gennady “GGG” Golovkin was losing his fight last Saturday night against Kell Brook at the time of the stoppage in round five at the O2 Arena in London, England. Mayweather was watching the fight, and he had Brook ahead of GGG.

Mayweather says he wouldn’t have had the fight stopped if he was working the corner. He would have let the fight go on. Mayweather says he respects Brook for taking a big risk in stepping up two weight classes to fight Golovkin. Mayweather says he’s waiting for Golovkin to move up in weight to take his own risks. Why Mayweather feels it’s so important that Golovkin move up in weight is the big question.

Mayweather didn’t say which weight class that he wants to see Golovkin move up to, but he’s said in the past that he’d like to see him fight former super middleweight champion Andre Ward, who currently is fighting at 175. This means that Mayweather wants to see Golovkin move up two divisions to fight Ward at light heavyweight.

Brook suffered a broken right eye socket early in the Golovkin fight in the 2nd round. If Mayweather would have allowed Brook to continue fighting with the eye injury, he might have gotten badly hurt. It would have been bad news for Brook to continue fighting beyond the 5th, because in the last 30 seconds of that round, he had stopped throwing punches and was just getting worked over by Golovkin.

With the way that Golovkin was pounding Brook, you could tell that the beating would have gotten worse with each round. It was no longer a competitive fight at that point, and it would have been bad if Brook had come out for the 6th. Brook’s trainer Dominic Ingle wouldn’t have needed to throw in the towel if Brook had fought in the 6th, as Golovkin would have knocked Brook out in a clinical fashion. Brook would have been unable to keep Golovkin off of him and it would have been over quickly.

Golovkin didn’t really seem to get started fighting hard until the 4th round. If you look at the speed that Golovkin came out for the 4th round, it’s like he had changed and was fighting with a big sense of urgency. Brook was out-landed in the fourth, but a lot of his boxing fans thought he won the round based on several shorts that he connected with late in the round. However, Golovkin’s shots appeared to be a lot harder, and they seemed to drain Brook. He was trying to elude Golovkin, and he looked tired, stressed and unable to escape from him. The judges and Brook’s fans perhaps didn’t see that he was getting worn down in the 4th by Golovkin. It was obvious was happening.

“If I was in Kell Brook’s corner, I wouldn’t have stopped the fight… honestly,” Mayweather said to Fighthype.com “Very, very close fight, some had Triple G ahead, some had Kell Brook ahead. I probably had Kell Brook ahead a little bit. But in the sport of boxing, it’s about taking risks. I respect Kell Brook for taking a risk, going up two weight classes, now we’re waiting for Triple G to go up and take risks like every other champion.”

It doesn’t matter that Golovkin-Brook was close through four rounds. The fact of the matter is the fight was no longer close in the 5th. It had gotten out of hand in a way that Mayweather never experienced in his career. Marcos Maidana gave Mayweather a lot of problems in their first fight, but it wasn’t like how Brook was getting worked over in the 5th by Golovkin. You could tell by watching that action that Brook was finished and he needed saving.

It’s kind of scary that Mayweather doesn’t seem to understand that. It’s a good thing that Mayweather wasn’t Brook’s trainer for the Golovkin fight, because he might have gotten seriously hurt if he were left out there for the 6th round to soak up more punishment.
Former IBF welterweight champion Shawn Porter says he thought that Golovkin had broken Brook by the fifth round, and that it happened fast. One second the fight was competitive, and in the next second, Brook was finished and too hurt to fight back.

The only thing Brook was capable of doing in the last half minute of the fight was to use the ropes as a walking cane like an old man. Brook looked like he was no longer capable of standing on his own in the ring. He was moving with his back against the ropes, trying his best not to get hit. Brook was missing some shots, but not all of them from Golovkin. Too many were coming through, and his body language at the end was that of a finished fighter happy to have his trainer Ingle save his hide by throwing in the towel.

“He comes out, he’s throwing his hands and he’s hitting Triple G, but over the course of five rounds he took a lot of clean shots and those clean shots really broke him down really quickly,” said former IBF welterweight champion Shawn Porter told Fighthype.com. “GGG is no joke…I didn’t think that Kell Brook would get stopped, obviously his corner threw in the towel in. He was taking a lot of shots prior to that but I thought that fight would go the distance. I think he’s just too powerful for anybody coming up to fight him at 160lbs.”

It was obvious from watching that Brook wasn’t going to be able to make it through the rest of the fight. Porter might not have thought that Brook was going to get stopped, but a lot of boxing fans saw the writing was on the wall after the 4th. When Ingle covered Brook’s head with a wet towel after round four and started whispering to him, it seemed painfully obvious that the fight was going to be stopped in the 5th Ingle.

It wasn’t just the whispering, it was the way Brook looked worried and worn out. Brook looked like a finished fighter who didn’t want to go out and take more punishment. The heat that Golovkin had put on Brook in the 4th was unlike anything he’d experienced in the first three rounds, and he was not ready for another round of that kind of pressure.

I think the decision to have the fight halted came in between the fourth and fifth, and Brook wasn’t going to protest the stoppage. He obviously knew what direction the fight was going in. If the fight had been allowed to go much further, Brook would have been finished on his face or flat on his back, and I doubt that he wanted to go out like that. The throwing in the towel saved Brook from an embarrassing and painful finish.

WBA welterweight champion Keith Thurman thinks Brook made a mistake by moving up to 160 to fight Golovkin rather than staying at 147 and fighting him and Saul “Canelo” Alvarez at 154. Thurman thinks that Brook should have moved progressed in stages rather than going straight up to middleweight to take on a dangerous fighter like Golovkin.

“If he can’t make 147; fights at 154, you’re looking at a puncher like Canelo, at 147, you’re looking at a puncher like me,” Thurman said to Fighthype.com. “The biggest mistake was to not face punchers like a Keith Thurman, to not face a puncher like a Canelo Alvarez before facing a puncher at 160. We’re taking about punchers from multiple weight classes and he didn’t mess with a puncher from his own weight class.”

If Brook had fought Thurman and been knocked out by him, then he wouldn’t have the excuse of him fighting a bigger guy than him. Brook wouldn’t have had a readymade excuse to use for him to explain away his loss to Thurman by saying he was fighting a middleweight.