By Scott Gilfoid: IBF welterweight champion Kell “Special K” Brook (35-0, 24 KOs) is looking past his mandatory defense this month against Kevin Bizier (25-2, 17 KOs) towards a much hoped for unification fight later this year against one of the other welterweight champions.
Brook, who is about to turn 30 on May 3, believes that a unification fight will be a stadium fight for him in the UK. Whether that’s possible against the likes of Jessie Vargas or Danny Garcia remains to be seen. Unfortunately for Brook, it might be his only chance of ever having a big stadium fight, because it doesn’t look like Amir Khan will ever give him the fight he’s been pining away for all these years.
I don’t think it’s possible for Brook to fight in a stadium if he faces Vargas or Danny Garcia. Those probably big enough names to get the British public to come see him fight in a large stadium in big numbers. Brook needs a bigger name like Tim Bradley or Manny Pacquiao.
Bradley no longer holds the WBO welterweight title though, and he’s likely going to lose his fight next month on April 9 against Pacquiao. I don’t think the British fans are going to want to see Brook fight Bradley with him coming off of a loss to Pacquiao. If Brook thinks he’s going to get Pacquiao to fight him, then he’s dreaming. That’s not going to happen.
Before Brook can get his dream stadium fight, he has to get by his #1 IBF mandatory Bizier on March 26th this month at the Sheffield Arena, in Sheffield, UK.
The 31-year-old Bizier has good pop in his punches, and it might not be as easy a fight as Brook thinks it will be. Bizier stopped the hard hitting Fredrick Lawson in the 10th round in his last fight in November of last year.
Bizier broke Lawson’s jaw in that fight. Bizier can definitely punch, and if Brook stands in front of him and trades, he’s going to get hit with some massive shots. I just hope for Brook’s sake his nose holds together. He suffered a broken nose in his controversial win over Carson Jones in their first fight in 2012, and it wouldn’t be surprising if Bizier broke his beak as well with one of his solid shots. Brook is obviously the heavy favorite in the fight, but Bizier can definitely punch. I wouldn’t look past him if I were Brook, because Bizier can definitely crack.
I rate him as just as good a puncher as Shawn Porter. The only difference between those two is Porter never stops throwing punches, and has a far better inside game. We saw Brook had to resort to clinching over 10 times per round against Porter to win a very close fight in 2014. Hopefully, we don’t see Brook going back to that game plan for the Bizier fight, because it would be terrible to watch. Brook says he wants to win in an impressive manner against Bizier in order to get the big fights. I’m just not sure that we’ll see that in this fight.
Bizier lost a couple of fights recently to Jo Jo Dan, but those were match-ups where Dan boxed Bizier rather than slugged with him. The only way Brook can beat Bizier in an impressive manner is if he doesn’t hold like he did against Porter. Brook will need to stay in the pocket and slug with Bizier to look good, and even then, it might be dangerous to do that. Bizier has really heavy hands, and he has the kind of power that can break jaws and noses, especially prominent ones like Brook’s.
“No-one is taking it from me and I have to be at my best. It’s all well and good saying that I want the big names but without putting on an explosive masterclass against Bizier I won’t get those fights,” said Brook. “The big names in the Welterweight division excite me and I think they excite the fans. I don’t do boring fights.”
Brook says he doesn’t do boring fights. Well, if you look at the Porter vs. Brook fight from 2014, you can make a very, very strong argument that it was boring fight. Brook was holding like mad in that fight, and it was a lot like the holding that Adrien Broner was doing against Porter in their fight last June. The difference in that fight was Porter didn’t let Broner’s nonstop clinching keep him from still throwing punches while being held. In other words, Porter had learned his lesson from his controversial loss to Brook in 2014. In that fight, Porter just waited for the referee to break him apart each time Brook would grab him to clinch. Porter obviously thought the referee would do his job and take points off from Brook for his frequent holding in that fight, but the referee never did. He just let Brook clinch at will, and the fight ended up being one of the most boring fights that I can remember ever seeing. If you want to see a similar fight to the Brook-Porter fight, then watch the Lennox Lewis vs. Henry Akinwande heavyweight fight from 1997. Referee Mills Lane finally had to step in and disqualify Akinwande in the 5th round for his constant clinching. The thing is, Brook was doing the same thing Akinwande was doing in his fight against Porter. The only difference is the referee working the Porter-Brook fight, Pat Russell, didn’t step in to disqualify Brook or penalize him for his holding. If Brook reverts back to form and fights Bizier like he did Porter, then I do not see the fight being a “masterclass” performance like Brook is hoping for.
“I’m going to get business done in style on March 26 and then I want to unify the division this year. It’s basically been 10 months of training for this fight and I’m desperate to get in there and put on a show,” said Brook. “I want a unification fight next or something similarly huge to get people into a stadium watching me fight.”
Brook is in a bad position right now. He doesn’t have a big enough name to get the top dogs to fight him right now. The only thing Brook has going for him is his IBF title, and he’s basically just a paper champion. Brook would be a much more popular fighter by now if his promoters had matched him up against the bigger names during the last 12 years of his career. But instead of facing big names, Brook has been matched against the likes of Frankie Gavin, Jo Jo Dan, Vyacheslav Senchenko, Alvaro Robles, Matthew Hatton and Lovemore Ndou.
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