By Scott Gilfoid: It’s painfully obvious that IBF welterweight champion Kell Brook is going to be a huge underdog on September 10 when he gets inside the ring with IBF/IBO/WBA/WBC middleweight champion Gennady “GGG” Golovkin. Brook is giving away weight, power and height to the bigger, stronger Golovkin.
Trainer Robert Garcia sees this fight lasting only as long as Golovkin wants it to. Garcia thinks the whole match-up is a big joke, because he rates Golovkin as the clear No.1 middleweight in the division going against someone that isn’t even the third best welterweight.
Garcia says he thinks there are between three to five fighters in the 147lb division that are better than Brook. He hasn’t even proven himself as being the best in his own division at welterweight, and here he is moving up to middleweight and talking about how he’s going to shock the world against Golovkin.
“I think Triple G wins whenever he wants to win,” said Garcia to Fighthype.com. “For Triple G, he’s making a lot more money with a lot less risk. Triple G is the best middleweight out there. Some people think of all time and Kell Brook is not the best welterweight either. It’s not like he’s getting a welterweight that’s knocking everybody out and beating the best welterweights. I think there are three of five welterweights out there that are much better than Kell Brook. That’s when I see the difference. I think Khan had a better chance [against Saul “Canelo” Alvarez].At least he won four rounds,” said Garcia.
I agree with Garcia about there being three to five welterweights in the division better than Brook. Here are the welterweights that I see that are better than Brook
1. Errol Spence Jr
2. Keith Thurman
3. Shawn Porter
4. Danny Garcia
5. Manny Pacquiao
I can’t see Brook beating any of those fighters no matter what tricks he tries. He can hold all night long like he did against Porter in their fight in 2014, and I don’t think it would work against them. Yeah, I realize that Brook beat Porter in 2014 by a narrow 12 round decision, but I see Porter easily beating Brook in a rematch.
Porter now knows how to stop guys that clinch 24/7 like Brook did against him. I also don’t think a referee would put up with Brook clinching 10+ per round against Porter in a rematch, because they would be tipped off ahead of time by Team Porter to watch for this tactic. A referee isn’t going to ignore blatant holding if they’ve been told to watch out for it ahead of time.
I think guys like Andre Berto, Amir Khan, Lamont Peterson, Konstantin Ponomarev, Leonard Bundu, and Sammy Vasquez would all be very tough outs for Brook. I think Brook could probably beat most if not all of them, but I believe there would be a very good chance that one or two of them would beat him.
“I couldn’t believe it either. I thought it was more like a joke,” said Garcia about the Golovkin-Brook fight. “It was like Triple G trying to clown Canelo. It’s the way boxing is now. For a welterweight to move up to 160 to challenge the best 160-pounder in the world, and a lot of people think he might be the best middleweight of all time, I think it’s a mismatch. Brook is going to make a lot of money to come back and still be world champion. Triple G is going to make a lot of money going to England. He’s going to make more money than he’s going to make in the United States.”