By Scott Gilfoid: WBC cruiserweight champion Tony Bellew, who claims to be the best fighter in the division, says we shouldn’t write off IBF welterweight champion Kell “Special K” Brook (36-0, 25 KOs) in his upcoming fight on September 10 against IBF/IBO/WBA/WBC middleweight champion Gennady “GGG” Golovkin (35-0, 32 KOs) at the O2 Arena in London, England.
Bellew believes that Brook will be strong at 160, and he thinks either guy can win.
“Do not write him off,” said Bellew about Brook to bbc.com. “Kell Brook at 11 stone [154] will be an absolute wrecking machine. “A lot of people are scared of Golovkin’s power but Brook’s stepped up. These are two men who can land big punches and it can end at any time.”
It’s nice that Brook will be a wrecking machine at junior middleweight, but unfortunately for him, the fight is taking place at middleweight at 160. Heck, even if Brook could make it to 160 and fight at the same weight as the other middleweights, he’d still be over-matched. Golovkin is destroying all the guys in his division due to his seemingly super human punching power.
If you put a small fighter like Brook in with a bigger and much stronger fighters like Golovkin, it’s going to end badly for the smaller guy. A good big guy beats a good small guy. That’s just how it goes. Sometimes a smaller fighter can beat a bigger fighter, but it’s usually the bigger guy that wins. We’ve heard people using welterweight Sugar Ray Leonard’s 12 round decision victory over former middleweight champion Marvin Hagler as an example of a smaller guy moving up two divisions to beat a bigger guy.
Sorry, that example doesn’t work in this case, because I thought Hagler was TOTALLY robbed in that fight. It was actually quite sad, really. Hagler should have won that fight in view, and I’ve seen that fight 100 times. I thought it was a pure robbery. Anyway, Golovkin is a different fighter than Hagler and Brook is a totally different fighter than Sugar Ray Leonard.
You can’t compare Golovkin with Hagler and Brook with Leonard, because these are different guys. Brook is slow, robotic and tends to hold when he gets in with good opposition, as saw in his fight against Shawn Porter. Leonard never held. He was fast, high skilled, and he didn’t need to resort to tricks like holding to win his fights.
“Brook should receive the same recognition for taking on the most feared middleweight anyone has seen since Marvin Hagler,” said Bellew.
I think Bellew needs to wake up and realize that Brook is getting recognition for taking on Golovkin. The thing is, it doesn’t matter whether the boxing public smothers Brook with adoration for his brave challenge. He’s still way, way over his head in this fight, and the compliments and respect he gets from the fans isn’t going to help him when he gets inside the ring with GGG.
— Kell Brook (@SpecialKBrook) July 10, 2016
If I were Brook, I wouldn’t get too caught up in the ego trip of all the compliments he’s getting. Brook needs to think about how he’s going to survive in the ring with Golovkin without ending up as his 23rd consecutive knockout victim. Brook needs to figure out how he can win and not ruin the fight by holding nonstop and/or running from Golovkin.
It doesn’t help Brook if he’s seen spoiling all night long in an effort to survive. We’ve already seen that approach used by Martin Murray against Golovkin and it didn’t turn out too well for him. Murray initially started out clinching over and over and over again against Golovkin. Murray’s holding was negated when Golovkin started taking a step back to keep him from being able to embrace.
Golovkin would then nail Murray in the face to send him a message to stop with the holding. Murray then went into the running mode and used that approach until he was knocked out in the 11th. The running allowed Murray to survive a lot longer than he otherwise would have, but it was such a waste for him. I mean, Murray was given a shot at a world title and instead of trying to win, he was looking to spoil. If Brook does the same thing, then I feel sorry for him because it won’t work against Golovkin like it did against Porter.
Golovkin knows how to defeat tactics like nonstop clinching and running. I don’t see Brook choosing to run in this fight, but I wouldn’t put it past him. I think his training team is going to watch tape of Golovkin and figure out that the old ‘punch and grab’ plan won’t work against him. They’ll then likely turn to a plan of having Brook hit and run all night in hopes he can squeak out a narrow win. I don’t think that plan will work for even round, because Golovkin is so good at cutting off the ring on his fleeing opponents.
Personally, I would never waste my time trying to run from Golovkin because it would be a waste of time. It would be the same with holding 10+ times per round. You can’t use that trick against Golovkin because he’s so good at defeating holding. I’m sure that Golovkin and his trainer Abel Sanchez will be watching the Brook vs. Porter fight to see how the excessive clinching was used by Brook in that fight to win an ugly decision.
Sanchez will have Golovkin working on defeating Brook’s holding if he decides to make the fight an ugly affair. The Golovkin vs. Brook fight will be on Sky Box Office PPV in the UK. I think it would be best for Brook to try and make it entertaining for the paying fans rather than looking to bore them by holding and running for 12 rounds. I’m just saying. Brook is the one that is trying to become a star in the UK. I don’t remember past British boxing stars like Ricky Hatton and Prince Naseem Hamad choosing to hold all the time. Those guys punched and made it exciting.