Kell Brook dominates Matthew Hatton, but shows a lot of limitations

By Boxing News - 03/17/2012 - Comments

Image: Kell Brook dominates Matthew Hatton, but shows a lot of limitationsBy Scott Gilfoid: Welterweight contender Kell Brook (27-0, 18 KO’s) defeated his hand-picked opponent Matthew Hatton (42-6-2, 16 KO’s) by a 12 round unanimous decision tonight in one-sided fight but showed a lot of limitations along the way in winning the bout in front of 10,000 screaming fans at the Motorpoint Arena, Sheffield, Yorkshire, United Kingdom.

I thought it was pretty boring fight to watch to be honest. I would have liked to have seen more back and forth action, but because Brook picked out a guy that wasn’t in his class it assured that it would be boring fight. The judges scored it 118-109, 119-108, and 119-107.

Brook showed his lack of power in failing to stop a guy that looks to be about 75% of what he was in his loss to Saul Alvarez last year. From my perch, I saw Brook’s problem being one of lack of arm length. There was so many openings tonight that you could have driven a truck through them but Brook couldn’t land the shots because he often couldn’t reach Hatton unless he was standing in close. Brook was forced to really stretch out his body from the outside to land shots and it left him wide open most of the time. I also saw zero head movement from Brook. I don’t know a fighter with nearly 30 fights under his belt doesn’t have any head movement at this advanced stage in his career. He’s almost a nine-year pro with no head movement still fighting domestic level opponents like Hatton. What is up with that?

Not much to talk about as far as the fight goes. Brook mostly jabbed, threw some power shots, and Hatton was holding like no tomorrow. Hatton was rocked in the 5th and 6th rounds from shots. In the 9th, Brook got credit for a knockdown from a left hand, but it looked like a slip to me. Bad call by the referee.

After the fight Brook sounded like he’d cured cancer, saying “Numbers one and two in Britain got in the ring and I proved I’m number one. No one can touch me at this level now. It’s on to a world title fight.”

Hatton is number #2 in Britain. Oh man, I wouldn’t be bragging about it if I was Brook. He needed to work it a different angle than that, but seriously Brook needed to step it up ages ago and here is he is still fighting the likes of Hatton.

Brook may or may not move on to fight for a world title in 2012, but he doesn’t look ready too me. He’s been fighting too many years against 2nd and 3rd tier opposition and he seems to have learned very little. That’s the thing about soft matchmaking. You get used to it and you really don’t learn how to fight properly. You can see that with Brook still not moving his head.



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