By Scott Gilfoid: The International Boxing Federation chairman Lindsey Tucker plans on ordering IBF welterweight champion Kell Brook (36-25 KOs) to begin negotiations with his IBF mandatory challenger Errol Spence Jr. (21-0, 18 KOs) on October 26. Brook, 30, will have 30 days to negotiate the fight with the 26-year-old Spence before a purse big is ordered.
Brook has been talking about wanting to move up to 154 to campaign as a junior middleweight following his 5th round TKO loss to IBF/IBO/WBA/WBC middleweight champion Gennady “GGG” Golovkin last month on September 10. Brook suffered a broken right eye socket in that fight, and he subsequently had eye surgery to repair the problem.
Brook isn’t expected to be back inside the ring until early 2017. Brook isn’t talking about defending his IBF title against Spence. Brook has been mentioning wanting to fight Saul Canelo Alvarez, Miguel Cotto or Amir Khan next. I don’t think if any of those fights have a realistic chance of taking place, but those are the guys he wants. However, Brook still hasn’t vacated his IBF 147lb title despite him talking about wanting to move up. As such, it seems that Brook is undecided about whether he should give up his IBF welterweight title or not.
There’s no doubt that Brook has taken a look at some of the talents in the 154lb division and probably realized what he’s up against if he moves to that division. There are no soft targets for Brook to pick up paper title the easy way, and he’s not going to be able to clinch his way to a controversial 12 round decision like he did in beating Shawn Porter in 2014 to win the IBF title.
Never the less, the IBF is going to force Brook to make a decision. Once the IBF orders the Brook-Spence fight, they’ll have 30 days to negotiate the match before the IBF orders a purse bid. The wheels will be set in motion for that fight to go forward. Brook can always tell the IBF that he’s not interested in facing the young talent Spence, and they’ll simply strip him of his IBF strap if he doesn’t vacate the belt first. Spence would then likely face #2 IBF Konstantin Ponomarev for the vacated IBF title. Ponomarev is similar to Chris Algieri in talent and punching power.
“On Oct. 26, we’re scheduled to notify Brook to start negotiation with Errol Spence,” said IBF chairman Lindsey Tucker to RingTV.com. “Now a couple of things could happen. He could say he’s giving up the title to move up in weight. He could come up and say that he suffered from an eye injury and he needs some additional time, so we could give him a medical extension. But we won’t know unless they come to us and say we’re giving up the title — we won’t know anything before then.”
It would be interesting to see how Brook does against the talented Errol Spence. Brook has talking himself up since his stoppage loss to Golovkin. This would give Brook a chance to show that he’s as good as he says he is. Spence is considered to be the future star of the welterweight division. If Brook thinks he can clean out the 154lb division like he believes he can, then he should at least fight Spence before he leaves the 147lb division. I mean, the only significant fight Brook has had during his 12-year pro career as a welterweight was his match against Shawn Porter in 2014, and that was not a great performance from Brook.
Like I said, Brook spent all of the fight looking to hold Porter to keep him from throwing punches, and it was a terrible fight to watch unless you like watching a bunch of clinching.
I’m not sure why Brook doesn’t just vacate his IBF 147lb title rather than holding onto it.
At least if he got rid of it now, the IBF could speedily order negotiations between Spence and Ponomarev for the vacant IBF title rather than waiting until the end of October to get a response from Brook that he’s not going to defend the belt against Spence. Of course, Brook can say nothing at all if he wants to. If he does that, then the IBF will likely strip him after an undetermined amount of time.
“At one point, we heard he was going to move up to junior middleweight and the next thing we heard he was going to stay at welterweight. So we don’t know what’s going on,” said Tucker about Brook.
Brook doesn’t seem to know what he wants to do. My guess is he’s going to test the waters to see if a fight against Canelo, Cotto or Khan will fall into his lap without him having to beat anyone good to get the fight. In other words, Brook will see if he can get a fight against one of those stars off the back of his loss to Golovkin.
If Brook fails to get a big money fight against the likes of one of those three fighters, then I see him making a super human effort to try and get back down to 147 to defend his IBF title against Spence. Brook says he has a hard time making weight for his fights at welterweight, so it’s unclear if he can even make weight for a fight.
I still think Brook will try to get down to 147 if he can’t get a big money fight against Canelo or Cotto. Of course, if Brook can get a fight against Khan at 147, then I definitely see him finding a way to make weight for that fight even if he’s left weight drained for the bout. If Brook loses to Khan, he can always blame the loss on being weight drained or some other issue to try and take the heat off.
Believe it or not, there are a lot of boxing fans who believe that Brook would have beaten Golovkin if not for him suffering an injury to his eye in that fight. If Brook can say he was weight drained or injured in some way to explain away a loss to Khan, then maybe he won’t take heat for another loss. The thing is that you can only back to the troth so many times with excuses for your losses before the boxing fans wise up and realize that you’re not taking responsibility for losing, and you’re not giving credit to your opponents for having beaten you. I didn’t hear Brook giving Golovkin much credit for beating him on September 10.
I did hear Brook talking about how he would have shocked the world if he hadn’t suffered an eye injury. Brook will probably wait as long as he can before he makes a decision in what he’ll be doing with his IBF welterweight title. He’ll need Canelo, Cotto or Khan’s management to contact him soon for him to make the decision to give up his IBF title.
Unfortunately, Canelo is injured with a hand injury, and he’s not going to be back inside the ring until 2017. Khan is coming off of a hand injury too, and he’s not going to be fighting until 2017. As such, I don’t see Khan wanting to put together a fight against Brook now. I think Brook’s best option for a big money fight is Cotto right now, and I don’t know if the Puerto Rican fighter is ready to resume his stalled career as of yet. Cotto has been out of the ring since last November, and he’s been looking to fight welterweights like Brandon Rios and Juan Manuel Marquez. Those are recognizable fighters to the U.S boxing public. Brook isn’t known to the casual fans in the U.S.