By Scott Gilfoid: IBF welterweight champion Shawn Porter (24-0-1, 15 KO’s) isn’t spilling his guts about his plan for whipping his #1 IBF challenger Kell Brook (32-0, 22 KO’s) in their fight in September, but he is saying that Brook has big problems when he’s not able to fight at a distance the way he likes to.
Brook doesn’t have long arms, but he prefers to fight at the full distance so that he can get the maximum leverage on his shots. He’s not learned how to fight on the inside during the 10 years as a pro, and this is going to be a new experience for him when he faces Porter.
The Porter-Brook fight will likely take place on September 6th or Sep 16th, according to Brook’s promoter Eddie Hearn.
Porter says he’s been studying a lot of Brook’s past fights recently, and he’s seen some major flaws that he plans on exploiting to the hilt when he gets the British fighter in the ring in the United States to defend his IBF welterweight title against him.
“He’s [Brook] rangy, but he’s uncomfortable when he’s not able to use his range,” Porter said to esnewsreporting.com. “There’s a lot I’ve seen and a lot I plan on working on.”
Of all the opponents I’ve seen Brook fight, only one of them, Carson Jones, had any kind of inside fighting ability, but even that was basic skills. Jones didn’t even try to take the fight to Brook the way should have. Jones took a lot of punishment in both of his fights against Brook by making the mistake of standing on the outside instead of crowding him and not giving him any room to throw his punches./ He made it harder than it should have been for himself by failing to smother Brook’s offense by standing within inches of Brook.
You can bet that Brook is going to take a crash course in the next two months in trying to learn how to fight guys that fight on the inside in an effort to try and learn enough in that time to deal with a fighter like Porter, but it’s probably not going to work. It takes upon years to learn how to fight on the inside, and even then there’s no telling how good you’re going to be.
Even an inside fighter like Ricky Hatton, who was considered to be one of the best inside guys, would likely be out of his element against a bigger, stronger guy like Porter. He’s got too much talent for a wrestler like Hatton. Porter punches on the inside, whereas Hatton did a lot of grappling in close.
Comments are closed.