Golovkin vs. Brook on September 10 in London, UK

By Boxing News - 07/08/2016 - Comments

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By Scott Gilfoid: Taking a page from Amir Khan’s playbook, unbeaten IBF welterweight champion Kell “Special K” Brook (36-0, 25 KOs) will be moving up from 147 to face unbeaten IBF/IBO/WBA/WBC middleweight champion Gennady “GGG” Golovkin (35-0, 32 KOs) on September 10 at the O2 Arena in London, UK. This is real shocking news, as Golovkin was previously in negotiations with middleweight contender Chris Eubank Jr. (23-1, 18 KOs) to face him next in September.

Eubank Jr. says he never received a contract for the fight, which could mean that perhaps it wasn’t a big enough fight to make. With Golovkin fighting the 30-year-old Brook instead, Sky Sports has a proven star to match against Golovkin on Sky Box Office pay-per-view rather than the still unproven Eubank Jr. It’s an understandable match-up, because it’s a better deal for Sky to have Golovkin-Brook rather than Golovkin-Eubank Jr., who still has a lot to prove at 160, especially given his retreat from facing world class opposition lately.

“I’m very excited to be fighting in front of the great British boxing fans and promise another ‘Big Drama Show’ against undefeated Kell Brook,” said Golovkin. “I give him much respect for taking this fight.”

Brook said recently that he was interested in facing Golovkin. I don’t think too many boxing fans took Brook serious, but it looks like he was serious.

This fight gives Brook his first real superstar opponent, as he’s been unable to get the big names in the 147lb division to fight him for some reason. Brook was recently in negotiations to fight WBO welterweight champion Jessie Vargas for a unification fight that was supposed to have taken place in September in Sheffield, UK. Brook’s promoter Eddie Hearn said they were offering Vargas $2 million for the fight. However, this week, Vargas complained about the negotiations dragging out and said that he might look at facing Tim Bradley in a rematch. I guess we now know why the Brook vs. Vargas negotiations was dragging out. Hearn and Brook were looking for a much bigger fight against Golovkin.

By facing Golovkin at 160, Brook won’t take nearly the same heat that he would if he were to face one of the top welterweights and lose to them. I mean, if Brook were to get whipped by someone like Errol Spence Jr., Keith Thurman or Danny Garcia, there would be tremendous fallout from a loss to one of them.

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It’s going to be a very tough match-up for the 5’9” Brook, because he’s giving away an inch and a half in height to the 5’10 1/2” Brook, as well as an inch in reach. But more importantly, Brook will be the lighter guy in the ring. This is pretty significant because one of Brook’s main advantages over his welterweight opposition is his weight advantage. He’s usually the heavier guy.

It won’t be that way when Brook gets inside the ring with Golovkin unless he packs on a ton of weight in the next two months, which I wouldn’t advise. Golovkin comes into his fights in the low 170s. Brook is in the 160s for his welterweight fights. Besides the weight, Brook won’t have the kind of punching power that Golovkin has going for him, and that’s going to be a problem too. Brook has been spoiled since turning pro 12 years ago in 2004, as he’s always been matched against fighters with less power than him. I don’t know if that’s something that Brook’s promoters have done by design in order to keep from getting knocked out, or if it just happened to go like that. Never the less, Brook won’t be the more powerful puncher of the two on September 10 when he gets inside the ring with GGG.

It’s going to be a real treat to see what adjustments that Brook makes to try and deal with Golovin’s power and talent advantage. In Brook’s fight with Shawn Porter in 2014, Brook used nonstop clinching for 12 rounds to keep from getting pulverized on the inside. The referee that worked the fight just let Brook hold all night long without addressing the issue by penalizing and/or disqualifying him. Brook was clinching over 10 times per round. It was awful to look at.

If Brook is going to try the same clinching stuff against Golovkin, we could be in for a really boring fight. The good news is Golovkin knows how to deal with clinchers like Brook, if that’s what he’s going to do. When Golovkin fought Martin Murray last year in February 2015, Murray tried to stall the fight out by holding Golovkin any chance he could get. The holding initially worked in the first couple of rounds, but then Golovkin made some adjustments by moving backwards to avoid Murray’s holding. As such, each time Murray would reach out to hug Golovkin, the Kazakhstan fighter would take a step back to avoid the embrace. At the same time, Golovkin would reach forward and nail Murray with a right hand to the head. After a while, Murray finally realized that it wasn’t going to work for him to try and hold Golovkin all night long.

I would hope that Brook doesn’t revert to form by looking to hold Golovkin 10+ times per round to keep from getting pulverized. This is Brook’s moment in the sun with this fight, and he’s going to have a lot of the boxing world watching him. He shouldn’t spoil it by looking to hold Golovkin all night long rather than fighting him. Brook needs to down with the ship like a captain. If he’s going to sink for lack of talent, then he needs to go down like a hero rather than spoiling for 12 rounds by holding every chance he can get like he did against Shawn Porter to win the IBF title.

In Golovkin’s last two fights, he’s destroyed Dominic Wade in two rounds last April and former IBF middleweight champion David Lemieux in 8 rounds last October.

For his part, Brook has beaten Kevin Bizier, Frankie Gavin and Jo Jo Dan in his last three fights. Believe me, Brook has taken a great deal of criticism from the boxing world for facing those three weak opponents in consecutive fights rather than taking on a talent like Thurman, Spence or fighting a rematch against Porter.