By Scott Gilfoid: Kell Brook (28-0, 18 KO’s) blames his poor performance in his last fight against Carson Jones on him being poorly conditioned from a bad diet for him running out of gas after the 6th round past July. Brook has hired worked on this problem since and supposedly we’ll be seeing the new and improved Brook in his fight later this month against Argentina’s Hector Saldivia (41-2, 32 KO’s) at the Motorpoint Arena, Sheffield, Yorkshire, UK.

I find it hard to imagine that a fighter that is only 26-years-old is going to be able to make big changes in his stamina just by getting a dietician and watching what he eats. Brook doesn’t bulk up between fights and always seems to be in fighting shape. I think it’s probably going to be a waste of time for him to think he’s going to be in better shape in the second half of his fights. His stamina problems has been there for a while now. I saw them a long time ago, but his opposition has been so god awful that they couldn’t put enough pressure on Brook for his stamina problems to show themselves as they are now.

This an important fight because it’s an IBF welterweight title eliminator with the winner of this fight becoming the mandatory challenger for IBF champion Randall Bailey. Brook already took heat a couple of weeks ago when it was learned that he turned down a guaranteed title shot against WBO welterweight champion Tim Bradley.

A lot of fans saw it as a duck job by Brook by choosing not to take the Bradley fight, and instead fight the arguably much, much easier fight against the little known contender Saldivia. Brook says he chose Saldivia because it will lock him in as the IBF mandatory challenger if he wins, and he’ll get a bigger payday that way when he does eventually get a shot against Bailey or Devon Alexander in 2013 or 2014. However, the argument against that is if Brook had taken the Bradley fight he’d get

A LOT more attention from that fight then he will for facing Alexander or Bailey, neither of which are as well known as Bradley at this point. Additionally, by Brook fighting Bradley and beating him, it would have put Brook in a good position to get a fight against Manny Pacquiao, because he might want to try and recapture his old WBO title. But it looks as if Brook and his promoter Eddie Hearn either didn’t see this possibility or didn’t care to take the risk to get into position to fight Pacquiao by taking the fight with Bradley.