Kell Brook vs. Kevin Bizier on March 26 at Sheffield Arena

By Boxing News - 01/20/2016 - Comments

brook67By Scott Gilfoid: IBF welterweight champion Kell Brook (35-0, 24 KOs) has a nice little mismatch scheduled on March 26th against #1 IBF Kevin Bizier (25-2, 17 KOs) at Brook’s favorite venue at the Sheffield Arena in Sheffield, UK.

This is an IBF ordered mandatory defense for the 29-year-old Brook. It’s unknown at this point why the IBF selected Bizier as Brook’s mandatory opponent rather than someone a little more talented. I mean, Bizier was previously beaten twice by Jo Jo Dan in the last four years. Jo Jo Dan was a recent opponent of Brook’s. It was a horrible mismatch with Brook stopping Jo Jo in the 4th round last year in March.

The good news is that once Brook takes care of Bizier, it will leave Brook with only two more potentially soft fights before he winds up facing Errol Spence Jr. in 2017.

It’s quite possible that Brook will vacate his IBF title rather than face Spence, so he might not have to worry about being knocked out by the talented American. Spence has been knocking everyone out lately, and he’s seen by many as boxing’s next huge star in the welterweight division. Brook would likely be little more than a speed bump for a talent like Spence, I Hate to say.

“I’m delighted to be back fighting at the Sheffield Arena again,” Brook said to skysports.com. “While I was gutted to miss out on fighting in October, I’ve fully recovered from the injury and feel stronger than ever. I cannot wait to put on another explosive performance for my hometown fans and prove I am the best 147-pound fighter on the planet,” Brook said.

Obviously, it’s just wishful thinking on Brook’s part for him to be under the belief that he’s the best fighter in the planet. We haven’t see Brook face the best in order to test whether he’s the best in the planet. I mean, there’s just that one ugly clinch-filled fight of his against Shawn Porter, and you can make an argument that Brook should have been disqualified in that fight due to all the clinching he did. There’s clinching that fighters use from time to time, and then there’s clinching that is used to completely negate the opponent’s offense. That’s what Brook was doing in that fight. The referee didn’t do his job to police the clinching from Brook in my view.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IBR-7FEXrf8

Bizier doesn’t have much of a chance in this fight. He’s just mediocre fighter with an inflated ranking the way I see it. The IBF should have at least waited until Bizier avenged his two defeats at the hands of Jo Jo Dan before they gave him a top 15 ranking. Based on those defeats, I don’t think Bizier deserves to be rated as a top 15 contender, and certainly not at No.1.

Sadly, Bizier fits in perfectly with the type of guys that Brook has been facing most of his career. For some reason, Brook has been matched very, very softly during his 11 year pro career. In his Brook’s last fight, he defeated Frankie Gavin. In Brook’s last 10 fights, he’s beaten Frankie Gavin, Jo Jo Dan, Shawn Porter, Alvaro Robles, Vyacheslav Senchenko, Carson Jones, Hector David Saldivia, Carson Jones [again], Matthew Hatton and Luis Galarza. Those are not good fighters in opinion, and it’s kind of sad that Brook wasted significant time in his career fighting these fighters instead of quality guys. You can make an argument that Brook would be a much more popular fighter than he is right now if he had faced better opposition during his career.



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