Kell Brook: Who will he fight in early 2017?

By Boxing News - 10/11/2016 - Comments

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By Scott Gilfoid: IBF welterweight champion Kell Brook is on record saying he wants to get a big fight when he returns to the ring in January or February 2017 following his stoppage loss to Gennady Golovkin. It’s still a question mark whether Brook will be able to return to the ring in three to four months to resume his boxing career. Brook had eye surgery recently to repair a broken right eye socket he suffered in his 5th round TKO loss to Golovkin on September 10 at the O2 Arena in London, England.

Getting back in the ring in early 2017 is fairly ambitious for a fighter like Brook. It’s hard to imagine Brook fighting in just three to four months, because it would mean that would need to start sparing soon. Even with protection in terms of a face mask, it still would be risky for Brook to be sparring that early after a broken eye socket.

Brook says he only wants to fight a big name when he comes back. However, with Brook having lost his last fight by a knockout to Golovkin, he’s not exactly big fight bait. There’s no real lure there for the top names to fight Brook given the way he lost the fight. It’s not just that Brook got beaten. It’s the way Brook stopped throwing punches in the 5th round and looked like he had surrendered even before the stoppage. It didn’t look good.

Ideally, Brook needs to come back and move back down to welterweight and defend his IBF title against his mandatory challenger Errol Spence Jr. Brook needs to show that he can beat a good fighter his own size without quitting or having his trainer throw in the towel when he starts getting batted around the ring. I believe that if Brook beats Spence, then he’ll get the top names – Saul Canelo Alvarez, Miguel Cotto, Amir Khan, Floyd Mayweather Jr. or Manny Pacquiao – to fight him. Those are the fighters that Brook wants to fight.

Here are the fighters that Brook wants to fight next:

Saul Canelo Alvarez – Out of all the guys on Brook’s wish list, Canelo is probably the most likely to agree to fight him. Canelo and his promoters at Golden Boy have no issues with picking out welterweights to fight in showcase fights to make him look good. With Canelo and Golden Boy not eager to fight Golovkin, he needs to show the boxing public that there’s no need to fight him because he’s better than him. The one way for Canelo to do that is to take on Brook and destroy him even easier than Golovkin did. If Canelo can face Brook in early 2017 and destroy him without getting hit much, then many in the boxing world would suddenly elevate Canelo above Golovkin. At the same time, the fans would give Canelo a pass for him choosing not to fight Golovkin in 2017 or even 2018. Canelo could tell the fans, ‘What’s the point in me fighting Golovkin? I already proved that I’m better than him by beating Kell Brook in an easier fashion.’ It would be pathetic excuse for not fighting Golovkin, but I think more than a few boxing fans would believe Canelo and not dump on him for avoiding the Kazakhstan fighter while he’s still young.

Amir Khan – This is not a likely for Brook to get Khan, because it doesn’t appear the interest is mutual right now. Khan gave a recent interview saying he wants to fight Danny Garcia AND Keith Thurman. Khan wants both of those guys. He didn’t mention wanting to fight Brook, so you’d have to assume that the interest still isn’t there in facing Brook. I think Khan is saving the Brook fight until the very end of his career. It’s like he’s got that fight stashed away until needed. It would be one of those ‘break glass in case of emergency’ type fights. Khan may not realize it, but I think his career is in such dire shape right now that he should take the fight with Brook. If he loses two or three more fights, there won’t be any interest from the British boxing public in a Khan vs. Brook fight.

Miguel Cotto – This is also a fight that Brook would have little chance of getting. Cotto wants to fight big names himself, but he wants to fight guys that are popular in the United States. Brook isn’t popular in America, and he might ever be popular.

Floyd Mayweather Jr – This is little more than a pipe dream for Brook if he wants this fight. There’s no way on earth that a popular fighter like Mayweather is going to make a comeback just so that he can fight a guy that was just obliterated by Gennady Golovkin. Where’s the upside for Mayweather? Even if he whips Brook, which is highly likely, he won’t get any credit for doing so, because Golovkin already did it in royal fashion. Besides that, the casual boxing fans still don’t know who Brook is in the U.S. If Mayweather fights Brook, he’s probably looking at a fight that brings in maybe 300,000 to 400,000 PPV buys. Those are not good numbers for Mayweather.

Manny Pacquiao – This is the same situation for Mayweather. Pacquiao isn’t going to fight Brook with him coming off of a stoppage loss to Golovkin. Pacquiao has nothing to gain from fighting Brook other than trying to get him out of there faster than Golovkin did. The pay-per-view buys wouldn’t be there for the fight from the U.S side, and that’s very important for Pacquiao and his promoters at Top Rank. Further, we’ve already seen that Brook likes to hold an move a lot. Pacquiao isn’t going to want to fight someone that he’s going to need to chase around the ring all night long, not at this late point in his career.

Brook, 30, says he doesn’t want to take any normal fights against non-stars in the boxing world.

It’s crazy that Brook only wants the big names. Brook wants Amir Khan, Saul Canelo Alvarez, Floyd Mayweather Jr., Manny Pacquiao or Miguel Cotto. It appears to me that Brook wants to be rewarded for being competitive with Golovkin to a certain extent. Brook really wasn’t competitive after round two, because he was moving constantly to escape the punishing blows from Golovkin. Brook’s fans feel that because he was able to land an occasional shot in rounds three through five, he was competitive and giving Golovkin a lot of problems. That wasn’t the case. The punches were so seldom from Brook that it wasn’t a competitive fight. The pro-Brook crowd made it seem like it was competitive by the way they were cheering Brook when he was landing punches. Golovkin would land 10 shots and the fans would make little noise. But when Brook would land something, the fans would cheer loudly and give the impression that he was doing really well.