Brook: I can see Jacobs beating Golovkin

By Boxing News - 01/14/2017 - Comments

Image: Brook: I can see Jacobs beating Golovkin

By Scott Gilfoid: IBF welterweight champion Kell “Special K” Brook (36-1, 25 KOs) says he created the blueprint in how to beat undefeated IBF/IBO/WBA/WBC middleweight champion Gennady “GGG” Golovkin (36-0, 33 KOs) in their fight last September, which Brook lost by a 5th round TKO at the O2 Arena in London, England.

Brook thinks that if not for him suffering a broken right eye socket, he might have won the fight. Brook’s promoter Eddie Hearn says that Brook told him that he would have beaten Golovkin if not for the eye injury.

Golovkin has a fight coming up on March 18h against WBA ‘regular’ middleweight champion Daniel “Miracle Man” Jacobs (32-1, 29 KOs) on HBO PPV at Madison Square Garden in New York. The fight sells for $54.95 on HBO PPV for U.S boxing fans. Brook, 30, thinks that Jacobs can win this fight by staying on the outside and boxing. Brook isn’t saying it, but it appears that he thinks that Jacobs can win if he uses his blueprint that he created on September 10.

The blueprint, as such, is basically moving for two and half minutes of each round, and throwing three or four punches and tying up. In other words, spoiling for the majority of each round, and then trying to steal the rounds with brief spurts of activity. That spoiling worked for Brook to win rounds with the three judges that worked his fight against Golovkin.

For many boxing fans, however, Brook’s running and spoiling style only won him one round in the fight, and that was the 2nd round. The other rounds, Brook wasn’t doing enough to win the rounds. Golovkin was landing the better shots, and the one moving forward. One judge scored the fight for Brook 3 rounds to 1 going into the 5th round. The other two judges had the fight scored 2-2 after 4 rounds.

“I met Jacobs. He’s a full-fledged middleweight,” said Brook. ”I did put the blueprint out in Golovkin fight. He could beat him. When he hits you, you know you’ve been hit. I can see Jacobs beating him. If the eye wouldn’t have gone, who knows? I think he’s tough, Jacobs. If he uses the ring, he could beat him. The thing with Golovkin, he walks forward and hits with big power shots,” said Brook.

It sounds like sour grapes with Brook. He couldn’t beat Golovkin, so he blamed it on an eye injury for him losing. Now he’s saying Jacobs can beat him. My guess is after Jacobs loses, Brook will blame the defeat on him having an injury too, and then say that Canelo Alvarez will beat Golovkin by following his faulty blueprint.

I think it wouldn’t have mattered if Brook’s right eye hadn’t been busted by Golovkin. Brook was going to lose the fight to Golovkin. There’s no doubt about it. Brook was running and broken down by the power shots. The turning point in the fight came in the 3rd round when Golovkin turned up the heat on Brook, and he didn’t respond well. Brook got hit with some massive shots in that round. Sadly, the judges scored the round for Brook. That told you what Golovkin was up against on the night being in the UK fighting Brook in front of a pro-Brook crowd. It’s too bad the judges didn’t have to reveal who they had winning the 5th round up until the stoppage, because I wouldn’t be surprised if the judges had Brook winning that round too.

Brook quit in the 5th round even before his trainer Dominic Ingle threw in the towel to save him. Golovkin hit Brook with a body shot, and that was all she wrote. Brook stopped fighting back, and just used head movement for the last 20 seconds. He quit. That’s all you can say. It wasn’t the eye injury that caused Brook to stop throwing punches. It was a right hand to the body that Golovkin hit him with that caused Brook to quit. That punch would have landed even if Brook’s right eye had been healthy, and he would reacted the same way by quitting. That’s my opinion. Brook quit from a body punch he was hit with. If you look at round 5 in slow motion, Brook stopped fighting after he got hit with a body punch. It wasn’t a shot to the head. As such, Brook’s blueprint in how to beat Golovkin is a major fail. If Jacobs follows that blueprint, then he’ll be following a losing game plan. I would never tell Jacobs to fight like Brook, because it was never a plan to win the fight. It was a plan to spoil, survive, and hope that he could finish on his feet. It was sad that the judges actually gave Brook rounds with that spoiling plan, because he didn’t deserve one round in the fight from what I saw.

Round 2 was the only round in which Brook did a good job of actually fighting rather than spoiling. The problem that Brook had was he couldn’t maintain that approach. Even in winning the 2nd, it was a costly one for Brook, because he took some big shots in the last minute of the round. In the 3rd, Brook wanted no part of mixing it up with Golovkin. You could see that from the first 30 seconds of the round after Golovkin bowled Brook over with a left hook to the head. Brook fell down like a twig from the shot. The referee Marlon Wright called it a slip, but in slow motion, it was painfully clear that Brook had been dropped by a big left hook to the head. Brook’s body language after that blown call by Wright was one of someone that was flustered and in the panic mode. Whatever game plan of spoiling that Brook had, it was finished. Brook was done for the night. Brook only fought well in the 2nd. He lost his senses completely by the 3rd, and he was fighting in a pure panic mode. The fight was no longer a fight. It was a blowout from that point with Brook in full scale retreat mode, and taking shots while on the retreat. That’s why it’s so utterly sad to see Brook and his promoter Eddie Hearn congratulating themselves for the good job they did against Golovkin. There was nothing to congratulate themselves on. Brook fought one round, and was running the other four rounds and then quit in the 5th. Some blueprint. I hope Jacobs has the sense not to waste his time using Brook’s losing plan, because he won’t stand a chance against GGG if he fights like he did.

When asked who gives Golovkin a better fight, Canelo or Jacobs, Hearn said to fighthype.com, “Canelo. I think it’s a very good competitive fight. I think he’s improving. I would have loved to see Floyd against Triple G. He [Mayweather] would have beat him. How do you maximize pressure for 12 rounds? Brook did it for three or four rounds. It’s pressure, pressure, pressure. The beauty of Floyd was he wasn’t a puncher.”

Speaking about Golovkin, Hearn said, “He cuts the ring off well. He makes you fight. Brook-Golovkin was so exciting. It wasn’t necessarily the game plan. He didn’t really want to fight. You had no choice. Floyd had the skills to tie him up. He [Brook] says. ‘I wish my eye didn’t get damaged. I could have beaten him. I could feel it. His power, if you watch the fight, he was getting hit with flush shots. Other than the 1st round in the first 20 seconds, he never took flush shots and stumbled across the ring. He said at the end, ‘Come on.’”