By Scott Gilfoid: Kell Brook will be going into this Saturday’s fight against unbeaten talent Errol Spence Jr. (21-0, 18 KOs) as the underdog when he meets up with the 2012 U.S Olympian at Bramall Lane in Sheffield, England. Spence, 27, is a 2:1 favorite according to Fight News. Just why the odds-makers have Spence as the favorite would seem fairly obvious.
Here are the obvious reasons why Spence is being picked as the winner:
– Youth: The 27-year-old Spence is younger than the 31-year-old Brook. Need I say more?
– Talent – This is a big area goes in Spence’s favor. Brook hasn’t shown the kind of T-A-L-E-N-T that we’ve seen from Spence. It’s too bad, but the talent just isn’t there for Brook.
– Speed – Spence is faster than Brook.
– Power – Spence is the bigger puncher of the two.
– Weight – Brook had to lose a lot of weight to get down to the 147 pound weight limit for Friday’s weigh-in. Yes, it looks like Brook will make weight, but at what cost? When you’ve had to lost 40 pounds of fat like Brook has, it’s going to be next to impossible for him to beat Spence.
– Size
– Experience – Believe it or not, Spence is the more experienced fighter despite having fewer fights than Brook. The reason is simple. Spence has a mess of amateur experience going for him as he goes into the fight. Brook has only 2 fights during his pro career against good opposition and he arguably lost both of those fights to Gennady “GGG” Golovkin and Shawn Porter. The rest of the dudes Brook has fought have been gawd awful.
– Ring wear – Brook took a career’s worth of punishment in his recent loss to Golovkin last September. The beating plus the injury he sustained against Golovkin is going to leave him in sad shape when he gets inside the ring with Spence on Saturday night.
There was no way around this fight against Spence for Brook, as the American fighter is his mandatory challenger for his International Boxing Federation 147 pound title. The only thing that Brook could have done was dropped his IBF belt to avoid the fight with Spence. But there was no chance of Brook doing that because he had dug in his heels and was completely resistant to giving up his IBF strap. It’s pretty easy to see why. Brook may not ever win another world title if he moves up in weight to the 154 pound division.
If you take away the weight advantage that Brook has had against his mostly over-matched opposition at welterweight that he’s faced in his 14-year pro career, he’s not special. But if Brook goes up in weight and has to fight guys like Jermell Charlo, Erislandy Lara, Erickson Lubin and Demetrius Andrade, I can’t see him beating any of those guys. Brook would become another Charles Hatley type contender. Yeah, Brook would get world title shots every now and then with the help of his promoter Eddie Hearn, but I couldn’t see him winning a belt. As such, Brook is staying at 147 and is pretty much doomed to go down to defeat against Spence on Saturday night in front of his own British boxing fans at Bramall Lane.
”Make no mistake, if Errol Spence Jr starts fast and gains control in the early part of the fight he will run away with it,” said former super bantamweight world champion Carl Framption to skysports.com about Brook. “The worst thing you can do is let a southpaw take control. Kell must start fast and continue the pace up until four or five rounds, then rest in the middle rounds and pick it up in the championship rounds. He has to show his experience and that he has been at a higher level. It’s imperative he does this.”
I don’t think Frampton is familiar with the way that Brook normally fights. He’s not someone that starts fast, and he definitely isn’t someone that can push a fast pace against a puncher like Spence. Honestly, it’s a good thing that Frampton isn’t Brook’s trainer because I could see him egging him to a royal beating at the hands of Spence. I can just picture Frampton in the corner barking orders to Brook: ‘Okay, we really got him now. Go after him. Don’t show fear.’
The problem with Frampton’s orders is he would be sending Brook straight into the path of an angry young lion in Spence. The result would be Brook getting ripped to shreds by Spence and basically taken apart like a jigsaw puzzle. I’d like to think that Frampton would come to his senses and start giving Brook some rationalize advice by telling him to ‘run for the hills,’ but I don’t think he would. It would be one of those situations where Frampton would be sending Brook into an ‘all or nothing’ situation against Spence.
Brook would either succeed or get blasted to smithereens in short order by Spence. It’s obvious what the outcome would be. Brook doesn’t have the youth, conditioning, power or the health to beat Spence by fighting aggressively. The only chance Brook has in the fight is to try and use a spoiling game plan like the one he employed against Shawn Porter in 2014. In that fight, Brook came up with a nonstop clinching strategy to keep Porter from being able to throw punches. It was the equivalent of a cornerback in football grabbing a hold of the jersey of a wide receiver and holding the entire pass pattern to make sure he doesn’t catch the ball or get open. Don’t ask me why the referee that worked the Brook-Porter fight didn’t disqualify Brook for his excessive holding of Porter. I’ll never understand that. I’ve never seen a fighter hold as much as Brook did against Porter and not get disqualified or penalized.
If Brook bends the rules against Spence by coming up with some strategy to keep him throwing punches, then he might have a chance of winning the fight. I just don’t know if the referee will let Brook get away with cheating, which you can argue is what Brook did in the Porter fight with his constant holding. Brook was lucky not to be thrown out of the fight. But if Brook has a referee that is lenient and ignores fouling, then he could potentially spoil his way to victory against Spence. To be sure, it wouldn’t be sporting to see Brook cheating again, but if no one says anything about other than Spence, it won’t be a big deal. Personally, I’m hoping that Brook takes the high road by trying to win the fight based on the skill-set that he has. If Brook is meant to win, then he’ll win based on him beating Spence in a one-on-one fight without him gaming the system by clinching excessively or using some other spoiling tactic.
“Everything coming out of his camp seems very positive, they are saying he has done the weight good. If he has, and it is the case he has done the weight good, then I believe Kell will win,” said Frampton.
It’s not about weight in the Brook-Spence fight. Frampton seems to have his head wrapped around the idea that if Brook is 100% strong after making the 147 lb. weight at this Friday’s weigh-in, then he’ll naturally beat Spence. That’s not what this is about. Yeah, the weight is one of the reasons why Brook will likely lose on Saturday to Spence, but that’s not the main reason in my view. The main reason that Brook will lose to Spence is because he’s facing a better fighter than himself. As such, Brook can be feeling great after he rehydrates for the fight, but he’s still going to be in a world of hurt when he gets inside the ring and starts taking body shots from Spence, who is unquestionably the best body puncher in the 147 pound division.
I’ve noticed that a lot of Brook fans seem to think that if he makes the weight fine, then he’ll beat Spence. They are so deluded. That’s not what the problem is for Brook. The problem is Brook is facing the replacement for Floyd Mayweather Jr. in Errol Spence Jr., and he’s not going to be beaten at this point. Spence is viewed as the next big star at 147. Brook isn’t seen as the next star. I hate to say it, but Brook is just that has been put in with a lot soft jobs in his career by his British promoters.
I do not begin to understand why Brook’s promoters have put him in so many record-padding fights against weak opposition instead of matching him against good fighters. I watched Brook be moved along during his career, and I always wondered why his promoters were matching him so weakly. The only conclusion I could come to was they saw a weakness in Brook that made them not want to take chances with him by matching him against good fighters. After I saw Brook win a controversial decision over Carson Jones in 2012, I understood why he’d been matched against so many fodder opponents.
