By Scott Gilfoid: Johnny Nelson of Sky Sports believes that we could see an upset tonight in the Kell Brook (30-0, 20 KO’s) vs. Vyacheslav Senchenko (34-1, 23 KO’s) at the Motorpoint Area. Nelson thinks that Brook might get beaten if he lets his foot off the pedal against the hard-hitting Senchenko in the later rounds.
Although Nelson still expects Brook to win the fight, he thinks there’s a potential for an upset if Brook doesn’t stay focused. But not surprisingly, Nelson sees this as a really tough fight for Brook, and I agree with him totally on that. This could be a life and death bout for Brook because he showed his level recently in his fights with Carson Jones. I rate Senchenko as a better fighter than Jones, so there is definitely a potential for an upset with Senchenko getting the victory.
Nelson said to IFLTV “I think it’s going to be a really tough test for Kell, not just physically but mentally. I don’t think it’ll be as tough as his first fight with Carson Jones, but it’ll be another tester. We could see an upset.”
I don’t know. Brook looked awful against fringe contender Carson Jones in winning a controversial decision over him last year. Brook’s promoter Eddie Hearn hasn’t shown any interest in matching Brook against the really tough contenders in the welterweight division ever since the first Jones fight. Instead of having Brook face the likes of Keith Thurman, Marcos Maidana and Ruslan Provodnikov, all of which I think he would lose to, Hearn has chosen instead to put Brook back in with Carson Jones and now Senchenko. It kind of makes you wonder whether Hearn has some concerns about Brook’s ability to hang with the best welterweight contenders, because Senchenko isn’t one of the best in my view. To me, he’s more like bottom 15 type of a contender. If Brook has to really struggle to beat Senchenko then that doesn’t say much about Brook’s chances to compete with the best in the welterweight division, does it?
Nelson definitely sounds like he has some worries about Brook because this shouldn’t be a tough fight if Brook was the real deal. I mean, can you picture contenders like Keith Thurman, Maidana aand Provodnikov struggling to beat Senchenko? I can’t. We saw what Senchenko’s quality was last year when he was beaten by Paulie Malignaggi in a one-sided fight. It was so one-sided that the fight had to be stopped in the 9th round. Yeah, Senchenko came back and beat a rusty Ricky Hatton last year, but this wasn’t a prime Hatton we’re talking about. This was a Hatton coming off of 3 years of inactivity. He’d taken off a lot of weight in training camp to get in shape for the fight and it was a bad idea to be facing Senchenko in his first fight. I think Hatton would have knocked out even quicker if he had taken on some of the other contenders like Luis Carlos Abregu or Ed Paredes. I don’t rate those guys as being in the top 5, yet I think they would have blown Hatton out in 2-5 rounds. The fact that it took Senchenko 9 rounds to get Hatton out tells you all you need to know about Senchenko. Heck, he was losing the fight to Hatton at the time of the stoppage.
This is safe match-making on Hearn’s part for Brook, but if he really has to struggle to beat Senchenko, then he shouldn’t bother facing Devon Alexander because he’s surely lose to him.
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