Golovkin says Brook won’t last long if he brawls

By Boxing News - 08/18/2016 - Comments

Image: Golovkin says Brook won’t last long if he brawls

By Scott Gilfoid: The bulked up Kell Brook might want to think twice about going out and brawling with Gennady “GGG” Golovkin in their fight next month, because the Kazakhstan fighter thinks he won’t last very long if he chooses that strategy. Golovkin has already said he doesn’t think all the weight that Brook has put on will help him in this fight.

Brook has bulked up to 176lbs in hopes that his extra size will help him be competitive with the 5’10 ½” Golovkin on the night. Both Golovkin and his trainer Abel Sanchez think that’s a fail on Brook’s part. Indeed, Sanchez believes that the added weight that Brook has put on will lead to him getting knocked out faster in this fight.

I happen to agree with Abel. The big and slow body-building –looking Brook is going to be easy pickings for GGG on the night.

Golovkin vs. Brook will be taking place on September 10 at the O2 Arena in London, England. The fight will be televised by HBO Championship Boxing in the States, and on Sky Box Office pay-per-view in the UK. It’s interesting that the fight will be shown on PPV in the UK, but in the U.S. It tells you how hard it is for the talented fighters to become stars in the U.S. It’s kind of a weird thing where arguably less interesting fighters wind up with their fights televised on PPV in the U.S, while the more exciting fighters are stuck on regular cable. It’s very strange.

“I am very interested in what Kell will do. He will not fight like a street fighter because that would be a very short fight. If he is moving and dancing, maybe longer because I know I need time,” said Golovkin to skysports.com.

I think in this fight, Brook is going to try and brawl rather than hold all night long like he did against Shawn Porter in 2014. I don’t think Brook will even try to run, but he moves like he’s carrying around 100lb heavy bag on his back. The guy does not move well and never has.

The reason why I see Brook choosing to stand and trade rather than spoil all night long is because he’s going to have a ton of his British boxing fans in the audience at the O2. I doubt there will be more than a handful of non-British fans showing up for the fight. As such, Brook is going to have a lot of pressure on him to make it exciting for his fans.

They’re not going to be pleased if Brook gets on his bike and tries to evade Golovkin for 12 rounds. Likewise, Brook’s fans won’t like it if he spoils by holding 10+ times per round by clinching repeatedly. The way Brook comes out looking good is if he goes out fights all out in a heroic fashion.

Brook’s fans won’t mind him losing nearly so much if he’s willing to go out on his shield by giving it everything he’s got for three to five rounds. They’ll give him credit for trying to fight Golovkin rather than running and holding the way that Martin Murray and Matthew Macklin both did.

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Macklin didn’t hold against Golovkin, but he sure did run and it didn’t help him one bit. Murray did both running and holding. He was able to survive until the 11th, but it was just so awful to look at. All that gawd awful holding and running Murray did. In hindsight, I don’t think Murray was even trying to win the fight, and that’s pretty sad. He was just looking to survive. We saw the same thing from Murray in his recent fight against George Groves. He just covered up behind his old clam-shell guard and let Groves work him over for 12 rounds.

“He [Kell] looks good, he is not a small guy. It’s very interesting because Eddie Hearn said Kell will have a deal with you, he’s already 160lbs. I said ‘wow, this is interesting’,” said Golovkin. “I know that Kell is a good fighter, but I know my style and I am ready,” Golovkin said.

Brook is definitely not a small guy. I think he’s a legitimate middleweight that has been torturing himself all these years draining down to 147 to gain an edge against the lighters in that weight class. Yeah, it works obviously if you can make the weight, but you can’t game the system forever. Eventually guys like Brook need to fight in the appropriate weight class designed for their bodies if they want to get the maximum performance each time.

Brook has probably been fighting at 70 percent of what he could have all these years due to him dropping so much weight. The thing is, 70% of a really heavy fighter is going to be more than enough to beat the guys that Brook has been fighting at welterweight. I mean, look at Brook’s resume of fighters: Matthew Hatton, Frankie Gavin, Jo Jo Dan, Kevin Bizier, Álvaro Robles, Vyachaslev Senchenko…etc. With the guys that Brook has been fighting his entire 12-year pro career, he could have beaten them even if he was only at 50% from being drained from making the 147lb weight limit.

What we don’t know is how much better Brook is going to be for the Golovkin fight with him being at his natural weight of the mid-170s. Will Brook suddenly be a monster at this new weight, or will he be the same fighter that Carson Jones was punching around the ring in their first fight in 2012? I get the feeling that Brook’s resistance isn’t the greatest.

I’m also not sure whether Brook’s nose will hold up to the battering it will take against Golovkin on the night. Carson Jones bloodied Brook’s nose badly in their first fight, and Brook seemed to go to pieces in that fight. If you take Jones out of the picture and insert Golovkin in his place, Brook would have been in for a world of hurt in that fight and likely would have blasted to smithereens within four of five rounds.

“I have worked with a lot of heavyweights who were big, big punchers, but with Gennady, it hurts when he hits you,” Sanchez said via skysports.com.

I think this is going to be bad for Brook no matter what he does in this fight. He’s not going to be able to handle getting hit by Golovkin for any length of time without dropping for the 10 count. If Brook does decide to spoil by holding for the entire fight like he did against Shawn Porter, he’s going to get hit with body shots while holding and while he’s coming forward with his arms out to put Golovkin in a bear hug.

With the power from Golovkin’s shots and his perfect placement of punches, he’s going to have Brook out of there quickly. It’s hard to take a body shot when you’re reaching forward to try and hold. That’s why it’s so much better for Brook if he just goes out fights Golovkin in the traditional sense. Brook can go out like the captain of a ship in a heroic way rather than scampering away to save himself for another day.