By Scott Gilfoid: Just as I predicted would happen, IBF welterweight champion Kell Brook (36-0, 25 KOs) totally wiped out an over-matched #1 IBF Kevin Bizier (25-3, 17 KOs) in stopping him in the 2nd round on Saturday night in their fight at the Sheffield Arena in Sheffield, UK. Brook bloodied the slow and plodding 31-year-old Bizier, and then dropped him twice in the 2nd round. The fight was halted after the second knockdown.
Bizier looked like he didn’t belong in the ring with Brook in this fight. Bizier had no real power to keep Brook off of him, and he was getting nailed with right hands repeatedly. Brook looked as robotic and slow as usual. He just didn’t have any resistance to make him slow down with his offense. Had this been someone with talent like Errol Spence or Shawn Porter, Brook likely would have been holding on and trying to keep from getting hit.
It’s difficult to say what Bizier could have done differently. To be sure, Bizier should have moved his head more, and kept his guard high enough to block the head shots that Brook was throwing at him. It also would have been nice if Bizier had thrown some actual punches, but I guess he was too busy taking shots for him to be able to respond with any offense of his own.
I give credit to Brook for beating the limited fighter that was in the ring with him tonight. Brook couldn’t miss with any of his punches because Bizier was just there to be hit. However, this is the same thing that was happening in bizier’s two losses to Jo Jo Dan. He was hit with everything Dan threw at him in those two fights. Even in Bizier’s recent win over Fredrick Lawson, he was getting hit by everything he threw. Bizier broke Lawson’s jaw with one of the shots he threw, and this led to the fight eventually being halted in the 10th round.
Brook’s quick victory over Bizier reflects badly on the International Boxing Federation, who clearly made a major blunder in giving Bizier a #1 ranking with their organization despite the fact that he had TWICE been beaten recently by Jo Jo Dan. I’m not sure what goes into the IBF’s rankings, but I guess getting beaten twice by Jo Jo Dan wasn’t a big enough clue that Bizier had no business being ranked even in the top 15, let alone at #1.
The IBF needs to get their act together because they’re wasting the boxing fan’s time by ranking guys that have no business being ranked at #1. I think Bizier is a fine fighter, but I do not agree with him being ranked #1. The same goes for Jo Jo Dan, who the IBF had ranked #1 last year. Errol Spence should be ranked above guys like Bizier. If he IBF had done what was right, we wouldn’t have had to sit through this one-sided fight tonight. I don’t know if Spence is ready for someone like Brook, but I sure as heck think he would have given a much more competitive fight than what we saw tonight. Spence’s punching power, which I rate as being better than Brook’s, would have forced Brook to use a different game plan. Maybe he would have had to resort to clinching all night like he did in the Shawn Porter fight. I don’t now, but I would have liked to find out what would have happened.
With all the talk that Brook his promoter Eddie Hearn have been doing about wanting to get a big named opponent for the summer, it’s going to be interesting to see who Brook winds up fighting. If it’s another sad sap opponent like we saw tonight and like we saw in Brook’s previous two fights against Frankie Gavin and Jo Jo Dan, then it’s going to be a real laugh. Brook wonders why he’s not getting the big names to fight him. It’s because of the constant mismatches that he’s had in his 12-year-old pro career. I’m not talking about horrible mismatches on paper, with Brook put in with mediocre opposition instead of the talented fighters.
Brook will be turning 30-years-old in May, and he cannot afford to keep getting put in with the kind of low level opposition that we saw from him tonight. Brook is burning through his career at a fast pace in fighting the fringe level guys, and he has nothing to show for it other than his inflated resume. When you take away all the fluff opponents that Brook has faced during his career, you have a record of 1-0. His only real win was over Shawn Porter in 2014, and I had Porter winning that fight. I thought Porter did enough to deserve the win. I saw as a robbery. Brook should have arguably been disqualified for all the holding he did against Porter. He couldn’t handle Porter’s inside game, so he choose to hold him each time Porter came forward, which was all night long. It was strange to see Brook just flat out lasso Porter without even throwing punches much of he time. The referee really blew it in that fight by not taking points off from Brook.
***
In the skeletal undercard, which had little in the way of interesting fights, 2012 Olympic gold medalist Luke Campbell (13-1, 11 KOs) bounced back from his recent loss to Yvan Mendy to defeat 32-year-old Gary Sykes (28-5, 6 KOs) by a 2nd round stoppage. This was a one-sided fight on paper, but I guess Campbell’s promoter Eddie Hearn must have felt that he needed a confidence booster type of fight after he was whipped by Mendy. At 28, Campbell can’t be given too many confidence booster fights because he’s age out. I don’t see Campbell as having the talent to go far at lightweight. He might want to try and strip off a little weight and move down to super featherweight, because I don’t see him as having the talent to win a world title at lightweight. His loss to Mendy kind of bared that out.
***
In heavyweight action, a soft looking David Allen (9-0-1, 6 KOs) defeated journeyman Jason Gavern (27-21-4, 12 KOs) in halting him in a 4th round stoppage.
Comments are closed.