By William Mackay: Number #2 ranked WBO welterweight contender Kell Brook (23-0, 16 KO’s) continues with his slow climb to an eventual title shot when he faces 39-year-old Lovemore N’dou (48-12-2, 31 KO’s) on June 25th at the Hillsborough Leisure Center in Sheffield, Yorkshire, England. Brook, 25, hasn’t exactly been burning up the welterweight division in his fights against mostly weak opposition while steadily climbing the ranks.

In Brooks’ last five bouts, he’s fought the following domestic level opponents: Stuart Elwell, Michael Lomax, Krzysztof Bienias, Michael Jennings and Philip Kotey. Those are guys that Brook arguably should have faced in his first two years of his career not as far along as he is now. Brook should already be fighting guys like Mike Jones, Randall Bailey, Carlos Quintana, Luis Collazo, Joshua Clottey, Shawn Porter, Paulie Malignaggi, Ionut Dan Ion, Brad Solomon and Mike Alvarado by now, not 39-year-old guys like N’dou.

I think Brook is going to be in a bad situation when he is eventually put in with a world champion because if he’s going to be feasting on 2nd tier guys all the way up until he’s put in with one of the champions, I see Brook not being ready for the experience and getting blown out of the water. The training wheels need to be taken off already. Throw Brook in the deep water already and see if he can swim. If he can’t, at least he’ll hopefully learn from the experience. Brook needs to face better opponents if he wants to improve. You can’t spoon fed the guy and expect him to compete with top level opponents when the time comes.