Spence willing to fight Brook in UK

By Boxing News - 11/15/2016 - Comments

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By Scott Gilfoid: Unbeaten #1 IBF contender Errol Spence Jr. (21-0, 18 KOs) says he doesn’t care if his title fight against IBF welterweight champion Kell Brook (36-1, 25 KOs) takes place in his home country of the UK. All Spence cares about is getting his shot at Brook’s IBF title so that he can take it from him.

Spence thinks that Brook and his promoter don’t even want to go through normal. He figures they’re going to let it go to a purse bid rather than attempting to negotiate with his management.

Spence doesn’t believe that Brook will be able to get a unification fight against WBO champion Manny Pacquiao like him and his promoter Eddie Hearn of Matchroom Sport are both hoping for. Spence sees Pacquiao not taking that fight. Pacquiao is hoping for a big money rematch against Floyd Mayweather Jr., not a small money unification fight against Brook.

Spence isn’t going to back out of the Brook fight over the money. If all that’s offered to him is 75/25, he’s going to leave it up to his manager Al Haymon. However, Spence wants the title shot, because he plans on beating Brook and then defeating the winner of the Keith Thurman vs. Danny Garcia fight to capture two belts at once.

The only title that won’t be in Spence’s possession at that point is the belt hold by Top Rank fighter Pacquiao with him holding the WBO strap. Spence may not ever get a chance at that title, because it seems to be a belt that is being passed on from one Top Rank fighter after another. It’s possible that Top Rank will keep that belt within their own promotional company unless Mayweather comes back to fight Pacquiao and take it from him briefly.

Spence said this to Fightnews.com about fighting Brook in the UK:

“I don’t mind. Like Kell Brook said they are going to go to a purse bid so they don’t want to do negotiations but rather a purse bid,” said Spence. “Whoever wins the purse bid, we will either fight here or the UK but either way it doesn’t matter.”

Spence plans on bringing his own judges to the Brook fight in the form of his two fists. He’s going to be looking to KO Brook, and that way the judges won’t have anything to do with the final outcome of the Brook vs. Spence fight. Brook was running almost the entire fight against middleweight champion Gennady “GGG” Golovkin last September.

Brook was finally caught by Golovkin against the ropes in the 5th round and badly hurt. Brook’s trainer Dominic Ingle then threw in the towel to have the fight stopped. Brook could no longer run and hold at that point in the fight. Golovkin had cut off the ring for the final time. It was curtains for Brook. Spence is going to likely do the same thing to Brook.

I don’t know if Brook’s surgically repaired right eye will hold up under the pounding of this fight. It’s obviously not the smartest thing in the world for Brook to take the fight with Spence without testing out the eye, but that’s impossible to do unless Brook vacates his IBF title. Brook doesn’t want to do that. Once he gives up his belt, he may never win another one, because he’s not really cut out to be a top junior middleweight in my estimation. The 154lb division is too good right now for a guy like Brook to move up and win a title.

“I don’t consider him the best. I mean the only person he beat was Shawn Porter,” said Spence about his belief that Brook is not the best at 147.

Well, it’s hard to disagree with what Spence is saying here. The only real win over a quality fighter in Brook’s entire career was his 2014 narrow win over Shawn Porter. That was a fight that saw Brook holding nonstop over and over again in each round.

The referee working the fight allowed the constant clinching without penalizing Brook for it. There’s holding which is allowable when a fighter is hurt, and then there’s holding where you’re gaming the system. That’s what Brook was doing against Porter. It wasn’t survival oriented holding. It was holding to stall out Porter’s offense. When a fighter does that, the referee is supposed to do his job. I don’t know why this particular referee didn’t do anything to address the holding. I thought that Brook should have been disqualified for his clinching in that fight, because it was excessive. It’s interesting that Brook didn’t try that same tactic against Golovkin. My guess is Brook didn’t want to lose fans by turning the fight into an awful display of clinching. Brook was going to lose the fight anyway. I guess he figured it was better if he was seen as being heroic by going out on his shield rather than being seen holding. I had Porter beating Brook in that fight.

It’s impossible to see Brook as the best, because he’s not beaten anyone other than Porter. If you take away all the holding that Brook did in that fight. I think he’d have been knocked out by Porter if he hadn’t been allowed to clinch all night long by the referee.

I wouldn’t be surprised at all if Brook goes back to his clinching routine when he faces Spence I don’t see him choosing to fight him in a real fight, because there would be too much danger in that fight. I think Brook won’t want to risk getting bludgeoned into submission.

It’s still not a given that the Brook vs. Spence fight will take place. Until it happens, I’m going to be skeptical about it.

I wouldn’t be surprised if Brook vacates at the last minute after realizing that Spence is simply too good for him to be mixing it up with. No, I don’t see Pacquiao wasting his time with Brook, and there’s no way that Brook will get a shot against the winner of the Danny Garcia vs. Keith Thurman fight. I just have a feeling that Brook may end up giving up the IBF title rather than getting inside the ring with Spence and getting knocked out.