By Scott Gilfoid: Unbeaten Errol Spence Jr. (21-0, 18 KOs) is waiting for IBF welterweight champion Kell Brook’s management to decide whether he’s going to start negotiating for a fight between them or vacate his IBF 147lb title. Spence says he’s hearing things about Brook talking about giving up his IBF title so that he can fight the likes of Amir Khan or Saul Canelo Alvarez.
Spence wants Brook to make a decision already so that he can fight for the IBF title in January 2017. Spence has wanted to fight Brook for a long, long time. Spence doesn’t buy into Brook’s excuses about being too heavy for the welterweight division, and using that as excuse should he lose to him.
Spence says he weighs in the upper 160s to low 170s himself, so he doesn’t see Brook’s weight as being a proper excuse.
Spence says he’s hearing that Brook might file for a medical extension to get another 30 days to buy time before he defends his IBF title or chooses to vacate the belt. Brook suffered a broken eye socket in his 5th round knockout loss to IBF/IBO/WBA/WBC middleweight champion Gennady “GGG” Golovkin on September 10 at the O2 Arena in London, England.
Brook has since had eye surgery to repair his damaged eye. Brook is expected to make a full recovery and be back inside the ring in early 2017. However, whether Brook will be fighting Spence or one of the big names is open to question. If Brook can get one of the big names to fight him, then he’ll likely vacate his IBF title rather than face Spence and take another potential knockout loss.
If Brook loses to Spence, he can’t blame it on his weight, because Spence is in the same boat when it comes to draining down from the 170s to make the 147lb welterweight limit.
Spence said this to Fighthype.com about Brook:
”I’m just waiting it out and waiting to hear from Kell Brook’s team if they are going into negotiations or vacate. I’ve been hearing him doing a lot of interviews and he’s been mentioning guys like Amir Khan and Canelo and guys in the higher weights, so hopefully he vacates sooner or later so I can get my thing going and fight for the title and unify the titles with the other champions in the division.”
You can bet that Brook is going to wait until he finds out if his promoter Eddie Hearn can find him a big name or not before he makes the decision to defend against Spence. Even if Hearn can’t find a big name for him to fight, I see Brook vacating his IBF title and looking instead to fight a soft touch at 154 while he waits for one of the big names to eventually show him any interest. It’s hard for Canelo, Miguel Cotto and Khan to justify a fight against Brook right now with him coming off of a stoppage loss to Golovkin.
If you look at Brook’s body language in the 5th round against Golovkin, it appeared to some boxing fans that he mentally quit with the way he stopped throwing punches and started dabbing at his hurt right eye. It’s hard to argue that Brook wanted to continue, because he stopped throwing punches in the last 20 seconds and just took pure punishment from Triple G.
“People try to make the excuse that he’s [Brook] too big and he’s outgrown the weight and he walks around in the 170s,” said Spence about Kell Brook. “I walk around in the 70s too. I walk around high 60s to 70s, so it’s not an excuse. Every fighter has weight problems.”
Yeah, it’s no excuse for Brook to say he’s too big for the welterweight division. If Spence is doing it, then Brook should be able to make weight without bellyaching about it too. Of course, if Brook doesn’t fancy his chances against Spence, then I can certainly understand why he wouldn’t want to melt down to fight him, because he’ll get beaten.
The IBF is going to be ordering the Brook vs. Spence fight negotiations to begin on October 26. At that time, Brook start negotiations with him, ask for a medical extension from the IBF, or choose to vacate his IBF title. Brook can also do nothing and wait for the IBF to strip him of his strap so that Spence can fight for it against Konstantin Ponomarev in early 2017.
I’d hate to see what would happen with Brook if he were to take on Spence in his next fight without a tune-up fight. Brook really needs to think about getting a tune-up so that he can see how well his surgically repaired righ eye holds up.
Spence recently beat Leonard Bundu by a 6th round knockout last August in an IBF 147lb title eliminator bout that brought in huge ratings on Premier Boxing Champions on NBC in the States. In Spence’s fight before that, he destroyed former WBO light welterweight champion Chris Algieri by a 5th round knockout last April.