Khan says Brook fought wrong in Golovkin fight

By Boxing News - 10/11/2016 - Comments

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By Scott Gilfoid: Amir Khan thinks welterweight Kell “Special K” Brook used the wrong game plan for his fight against IBF/IBO/WBA/WBC middleweight champion Gennady “GGG” Golovkin in their fight on September 10 in London, England. Khan suspects that Brook, 30, made up his mind that he couldn’t win the fight against Golovkin before he even stepped foot into the ring, so he just went out looking to war with Golovkin to go out in a blasé of glory.

Khan believes that Brook just went there for a payday against Golovkin, and not to try and win the fight. Khan saw the fight as a win-win situation for Brook, because he would get a big payday fighting Golovkin, and he would get a lot of credit from boxing fans if he brawled with him. However, Khan thinks that Brook would have stood a better chance if he’d boxed him, and used his boxing skills rather than standing and slugging.

With Brook deciding to stand and trade at times, Golovkin quickly broken him down, forcing a 5th round stoppage after Brook’s trainer Dominic Ingle threw in the towel to save his fighter. Brook suffered a broken right eye socket for his troubles. Khan commends Ingle for throwing in the towel at the right time in the fight to save Brook from a potential career-ending injury to his right eye.

Khan said this to Fighthype.com:

“Triple G was dominating him and he knew that. He still took a bad beating. He was still really hurt. He was out of it. I mean, I think that they got everything wrong, bro. Look, Kell should have used more of the boxing than trying to put aggression on and standing there with Triple G. I just think he did it for the payday.”

Of course, Golovkin was dominating Brook. The fight was over after the 2nd round, because that was when Golovkin started to fight hard and start slugging. In the first two rounds, Golovkin was more or less fighting in 1st gear in picking spots to throw big shots. Golovkin wasn’t pushing the fight hard until the 3rd. The entire fight complexity changed in round three. You could see it immediately with the way that Golovkin jumped off his stool and ran out to the center of the ring to intercept Brook. It was like watching a completely different fight.

Brook came out to the center of the ring with a lazy look to his face, as if he was expecting Golovkin to continue to fight in at a slow pace that would allow him to throw his uppercuts and pot shots. Once Brook realized that he was dealing with devastating fire from every angle from Golovkin, you could see his eyes widen, as if to say, ‘Man, I’m getting the heck out of dodge. I DON’T NEED THIS!’ That’s when Brook started running like no tomorrow. It didn’t matter though. Golovkin kept cutting off the ring on Brook and nailing him with tremendous shots to the head. At one point, Golovkin caught Brook against the ropes and landed a right hand that EXPLODED off the head of Brook, making a loud noise that could be heard above the roar of the pro-Brook crowd. Surprisingly, Brook took the shot, but he immediately scrammed.

Brook dashed away like someone who’d been scaled by hot water. Brook wanted no part of Golovkin from that point on. Golovkin landed a ton of huge punches in this round. By the midpoint of round three, Brook’s features had changed. He was bleeding from the nose, his right eye had suddenly swelled up, and his face was swelling as well. Brook looked well beaten. Also, Brook couldn’t close his mouth for some reason. It was just hanging open all the time, even when he was standing and trying to fight.

Goodness knows, it’s a miracle that Brook didn’t suffer a broken jaw in the fight, because when you’ve got your trap open the way Brook’s was, it’s easy to suffer a jaw injury. I’m just wondering if there was some problem with Brook’s jaw for him to be keeping his mouth open like a large whale catching plankton in the ocean. It was weird to look at. I mean, it’s not as if it was late in the fight or anything. Brook shouldn’t have been so tired looking this early in the fight, and yet he was. The fast pace that Golovkin was setting had Brook gassed out by the 3rd round. He was literally in the shutdown mode already in the fight. In hindsight, I do not understand how any of the three judges could have given Brook the third round. Honestly, how do you watch the third round and think that Brook won it? I have no idea. It was a total massacre in the third round.

“Amir Khan was beating Canelo when he got hit with that one shot and he got stopped,” said Khan in speaking about himself in the third person. “Triple G was dominating him and he knew that, but he goes, “Look, I’m just going to go in there.” This is what I think, he went in there thinking he was always going to get beat, but he’s going to make more money.”

Khan definitely did a better job in his fight against Saul Canelo Alvarez in May of this year than Brook did against Golovkin. Khan actually appeared to be winning the fight against Canelo at the point he was knocked out by a right hand from the popular Mexican fighter in the 6th. I thought Khan was leading four rounds to one at the time that he was knocked out. Khan was doing an admirable job. In Brook’s case, I had Golovkin winning three rounds to one when it was stopped in round five. Brook only won the 2nd round of the fight in my book. I couldn’t give Brook round one, because he was clipped by a left hook from Golovkin that staggered him.

Brook was out on his feet from that shot. You don’t give rounds to fighters that are staggered, but in this case, Brook won the first round in the scoring from the judges that worked the fight. It was pretty sad. You couldn’t give Brook round three, because that was like watching like watching a last stand. Brook got massacred in the third. I couldn’t give Brook the 4th round, because he was out-landed, and he wasn’t making it a fight of it any longer.

There were only two instances in the entire 4th round where Brook stopped running and tried to fight. The rest of the time, Golovkin was chasing Brook around, nailing him with body and head shots each time he would trap him. How on earth do you give the 4th round to Brook under those conditions? All I can think is that the judges were responding to the crowd rather than watching what was actually taking place in the ring. Brook was totally panicking. He looked like he had lost his senses completely the way that people do when under EXTREME duress. Brooks’ fighting was no longer logical. It was the fighting of someone who was panicking.

I don’t think Brook would have come out ahead even if he did everything that Khan thinks he should have done against Golovkin. Brook was always going to be knocked out by Golovkin. That’s just the reality of the situation. Brook could have clinched all night long, and he would have stilled been knocked out. He could have ran all night, and Golovkin would have caught him and knocked him out. Brook did the only thing that would make him look decent, and that was to try and slug at times. He obviously couldn’t fight in a stationary manner against Golovkin, because the fight likely would have ended in the 1st round if he didn’t move. Brook was moving from round one. He didn’t have the chin or the ability to take the body shots that Golovkin was hitting him with. So he picked his spots to throw punches, and used movement in between to escape from being knocked out.

By the 5th round, Brook could no longer move after getting hit with a body shot that sucked the energy out of him. Right before Ingle threw in the towel, Brook stopped throwing punches, dabbed at his right eye with his glove, as if to say, ‘I quit!’ It was at this point, Ingle threw in the towel to have the fight stopped. Brook’s body language was extremly easy to ready. Ingle did what anyone would have done if they’d seen there fighter stop throw punches, and stop even trying to block punches.

The only thing Brook was doing was moving his head and upper body to try and avoid the searing shots from Golovkin. Brook wasn’t trying to block the shots with his gloves. That was the tip off that Brook was done and wanted out. He had dropped his gloves and was just waiting for the fight to be stopped. Golovkin had changed his punching style to accommodate for Brook’s head movement by chopping down on him, and he was having great success with those type of punches. Golovkin couldn’t miss in the end. Brook’s head movement was no longer helping him. He was about to be finished off if not for the white towel being thrown in by Ingle.