By Scott Gilfoid: 41-year-old Juan Manuel Marquez (56-7-1, 40 KO) will reportedly is in the UK for the Daniel Estrada vs. Kevin Mitchell fight, and he’s expected to meet with IBF welterweight champion Kell Brook for a fight in 2015, according to Fightnews.
Brook has a stay busy fight in March against his mandatory challenger Jo Jo Dan, but once he gets that fight out of the way he’ll be free and clear to face Marquez.
The Dan fight is an easy one for Brook, because Dan doesn’t have any power and his ranking is higher than his actual talent in the minds of a lot of boxing fans.
Marquez wants a chance to win a fourth division world title at welterweight. He fought former WBO welterweight champion Tim Bradley in 2013, but he ended up losing a 12 round split decision to the American fighter.
Marquez has been dealing with a knee injury stemming from his win over Mike Alvarado in his last fight in May of 2014. The injury will need to be healed for him to pass a medical exam to fight for a world title against Brook.
Brook has talked about wanting to fight Marquez, and his promoter Eddie Hearn has said positive things about this fight as well. I’m sure that Brook and Hearn would be more than happy to have Marquez as an opponent in 2015, because it would give Brook his first opportunity to pick up a notable scalp, even if it’s an old one approaching his 42nd birthday.
The only other name that Brook has on his resume is Shawn Porter, who Brook defeated by a controversial decision in 2014 after clinching his way to victory in a truly ugly to watch fight. Marquez would at least be a name that people could recognize on Brook’s resume. It would be good if Brook were to fight Marquez without clinching like he did against Porter, because there’s no way that he’ll get any credit for the victory if he holds all night long.
Brook needs to fight in a fan friendly way if he wants to get a big fight against Floyd Mayweather Jr and Manny Pacquiao. Those are the fights that Brook has been yapping about. The problem is he’s been facing nothing but obscure opposition during his career.
In the one fight where he fought a guy with somewhat of a name against Porter, Brook blew it by clinching all night long each time Porter got in range. If Brook is going to revert to form and clinch Marquez all night long, then it won’t matter if he beats him or not. I can’t see him getting a fight against Mayweather or Pacquiao off of a win like that.
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