By Dan Ambrose: IBF welterweight champion Kell “Special K” Brook (36-0, 25 KOs) has been coming up with a variety of reasons why he’ll be able to defeat unbeaten IBF/IBO/W BA/WBC middleweight champion Gennady “GGG” Golovkin (35-0, 32 KOs) in their fight on September 10.
The new reasons are fairly exhausting with Brook saying that he would have beaten everyone that Golovkin has ever fought before in pro career. Brook is now saying that his punching power is better than Golovkin’s, and his chin is better as well. Just how Brook could go about proving such a theory is unclear.
His record would have you believe that his punching isn’t on part with Golovkin’s, because he doesn’t have the same KO percentage. Brook has knocked out 69% of his opponents compared to Golovkin’s 91%. That right there would give you an indication that Brook doesn’t have the same kind of punching power.
“It’s going to come down to the mind in this fight,” said Brook to Fighthub. “It’s not going to come down to the power. Using the feet, the hands, and the body and, using the ring. It’s going to be poetry in motion in there. He’s never fought nobody like me. He’s going to learn real quick in this fight that he’s not in with a welterweight. He’s in there with somebody with venom in his hands. Everyone he’s fought, I would beat. He’s never fought anybody with my mindset either. He’s just a man with two arms and two legs. I’m going to shoot the works in this fight. Everybody is going to be gobsmacked in this fight with all the belts wrapped around me after the fight,” said Brook.
I don’t believe that Brook would have beaten everyone that Golovkin has fought during his career. It’s nice sound bite for Brook to say that he could beat everyone on Golovkin’s resume, but I don’t think so. Brook has only fought one good opponent in his 12-year pro career and that was the 5’7” Shawn Porter, and Brook had to hold constantly to keep from getting bludgeoned into submission on the inside.
The referee let Brook get away with excessive clinching in that fight that should have led to penalization and a disqualification. The referee didn’t do his job policing Brook’s out of control holding on the night. It stands to reason that if Brook couldn’t even beat Porter without bending the rules by holding nonstop, then he would be in trouble against powerful past Golovkin opponents like Martin Murray, Curtis Stevens, David Lemieux, Daniel Geale and Marco Antonio Rubio. The slick Willie Monroe Jr. would give Brook all kinds of problems with his combination of movement and power. That would be a very hard fight for Brook.
“I’m a different person from normal people,” said Brook. “With me unbeaten and always finding a way, I’m not really in fear of his power. You’re going to see a different animal. I think Amir Khan was coming up to middleweight on the night. I’m actually coming down to make 160. I’m naturally a bigger guy. It’s really hard for me to make 147. There’s no secret about that. He hasn’t got the chin I’ve got. He hasn’t got the toughness. He hasn’t got the power I’ve got. It’s a completely different fight with me in there, and you’re going to see on the night,” said Brook.
I think Brook is starting to go overboard in describing his attributes and why he’s going to beat Golovkin. It’s one thing to talk about his mind being a factor that will help him beat GGG, but it’s going a bit overboard when Brook starts saying he’s got better punching power than him as well. It’s obvious just from looking at the two fighters’ past fights that Brook does not have the same kind of punching power as Golovkin. Brook needs to wear his opponents down slowly with heavy shots to get his knockouts. Golovkin often knocks his opponents down with a single shot. Brook doesn’t do that. He batters them and eventually knocks them down a number of times before he gets a stoppage win.
I think that Golovkin not only would beat all the guys on Brook’s 36-fight resume, but also knock all 36 of them out. Shawn Porter is a good fighter, but I think Golovkin would be too much for him and he’d get him out of there with body shots on the inside. Porter likes to fight on the inside, and that would be his undoing against Golovkin.
“I know on September 10, we are going to see the best in me and I am excited to see what I can do,” said Brook to skysports.com. “We know what I can do in the gym, I always seem to do enough, I always find a way to win and it’s going to be the same on September 10. This is the biggest fight in world boxing, I have stepped up and shocked the world with this fight, and I am going to show everyone September 10.”