Brook: “I am going to use everything I have got in me for this fight”

By Boxing News - 08/02/2016 - Comments

BOXING

By Scott Gilfoid: IBF welterweight champion Kell “Special K” Brook (36-0, 25 KOs) says he’ll be using every possible thing he can do for him to get the ‘W’ in his scheduled title shot next month against the middleweight division’s premier knockout artist Gennady “GGG” Golovkin (35-0, 32 KOs) on September 10 at the O2 Arena in London, England.

While this may seem like not a big deal to some boxing fans that Brook is willing to use any means necessary to get the victory over the Kazakhstan fighter, it is a big deal for me.

We’ve seen Brook go to the ends of the earth to get a victory over the favored Shawn Porter in 2014 by using frequent clinching to keep Porter from being able to throw his punches. Technically, it was a boxing fight, but it looked more like a non-boxing fight to me due to all the grappling that Brook was using in the fight and not getting penalized for.

I’m just saying. If a fighter is willing to do anything possible to get a win, then you have to worry about the kind of fight we might be seeing on September 10 between Golovkin and Brook. If Golovkin goes into the O2 Arena thinking that it’s just going to be a fight held under the Marques of Queensbury rules, he may be in for a rude awakening when he suddenly finds that Brook has seemingly become attached to him and won’t let go.

I’d like to think the referee would be on his J-O-B and would do the right thing by disqualifying Brook if he can’t get him to listen and pay attention to warnings, but I have a feeling that nonstop clinching will be a MAJOR part of Brook’s game plan for the Golovkin part.

“I am going to use everything I have got in me for this fight,” Brook said to skysports.com. “Nobody has really pushed me to the limit. Triple G is going to get the best out of me. I want to be in the big fights and the drama fights. I want to excite all of the fans.”

Well, if Brook truly wants to excite all the boxing fans that will be coming to see him specifically on September 10, then he should make it a clean fight and resist the urge to clinch Golovkin, because the fight fans want to see action, not survival oriented holding for 12 rounds like we saw in the Porter vs. Brook fight in 2014.

When you get a fighter that has put together a game plan to try and hold his opponent as much as possible to smother their offense, then you have to hope the referee at least will do their job by first giving warnings for the holding, and then progress to penalization’s and then to a disqualification. I mean, that would obviously make Brook look bad in being disqualified for holding in the Golovkin fight, but what can you do? If Brook is going to tie Golovkin up at every opportunity, then it’s the referee’s job to take points off from him if he turns the fight into an MMA type of affair.

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“My concern is if he [Brook] can get off those flurries and score points, and run away and get close to tie up, and move around, which he’s capable of because he did it against Shawn Porter, with the additional 13 pounds, that will give him strength to title Golovkin up and not let Golovkin work,” said Sanchez to esnewsreporting.com. “That’ll be an issue we’ll have to address when we get to the gym and make sure by fight time that can happen.”

Sanchez is right to predict that Brook will be using the hit, hold and run approach to this fight. Brook is clearly not going to stand in front of Golovkin and look to grade with him all night despite all the bluster we’re hearing from him about him wanting to look for a knockout. Coming events cast their shadows before.

Believe me; Brook will go back to the game plan that worked for him in his toughest fight of his career against Porter by choosing to punch and hold all night long against Golovkin. The added variation to that game plan is movement. Brook will be using a lot of movement along with him jumping in to throw a pot shot followed by an immediate bear-hug of Golovkin to prevent him from responding with a counter shot.

Brook has been saying this week that he plans on getting his shots off first, which is exactly what he did in the Porter fight. Brook would throw a pot shot, and then fall in for a clinch to keep Porter from being able to fight back. It was so, so awful to watch because it was repetitive, and the referee didn’t take any points off from Brook for doing this like he should have.

I think a lot of boxing fans are hoping this will be an exciting fight between Golovkin and Brook on 9/10. But unfortunately, we’ve seen Brook choose to use gimmicks to win by choosing to hold all night long, and I think he’s likely to fall back onto that old tired plan to use on Golovkin. It’s a good thing that Golovkin’s trainer Abel Sanchez is aware of what Brook will likely be doing in this fight with his holding, because it would be bad if they went into the fight not prepared for the holding like Porter. He didn’t realize that Brook would resort to holding over and over again all night long in their fight in 2014. Porter kept looking at the referee, hoping he would do the right thing by taking control over the fight to stop Brook from the excessive holding, but nothing was ever done. Since Brook was able to get away with the holding against Porter and win the fight arguably because of that, it’s pretty much a given that the same tactic will be used against Golovkin.