By Scott Gilfoid: Kell Brook is really out of his class in more ways than one in his coming fight against Gennady “GGG” Golovkin (35-0, 32 KOs) on September 10. While Brook is moving up two entire divisions for this fight, which would make his job hard enough, he’s also facing what could be the hardest puncher in the 160lb division. That’s bad for Brook (36-0, 25 KOs), because he’s been dining on weak fodder opposition for the most part for the last 12 years of his pro career.
Golovkin’s trainer Abel Sanchez sees Brook getting smashed to bits early on when he tries to use his new bulk to trade with Golovkin in their fight at the O2 Arena in London, England. Sanchez thinks that the pro-Brook crowd will make him brave, and he’ll want to battle Triple G in a toe-to-toe brawl to please his adoring fans.
That in turn will lead to Brook’s worse nightmares coming true with him getting smashed fairly quickly. Sanchez sees Brook going down for the final count by the 5th. He can’t see Brook lasting past round five, especially with all that weight that he’s put on lately.
Brook weighed in at 176lbs during the World Boxing Council’s mandated 30-day weight check this month. Sanchez doesn’t see that weight going anywhere. I mean, Brook will take off 16 of the pounds to get down to 160lbs for the weigh-in on September 9, but then he’ll promptly put the weight back on in a hurry and then some in the 24 hours before the fight. Heck, we might even see Brook rehydrate a little too much by going past the weight he took off from 176. Fighters do that accidentally when they go overboard with their rehydrating.
“If Kell comes to fight, it’s not going to be a round fight for us anyway,” said Sanchez told Fighthub.com. “It’s going to be a great fight for as long as it lasts.I don’t think the fight goes past the fifth round. I think Kell, from seeing the weight that he’s at, I think Kell is going to want to fight. I think Kell is going to want to put on a show for his fans and prove he’s the man that they think he is and the champion that they think he is. By doing that, he’s going to be catching some shots from a very heavy hitter,” said Sanchez.
So there it is. Golovkin will destroy Brook within five rounds on September 10 in front of a horde of Brook fans at the O2 Arena in London. I wish I could disagree with anything that Sanchez is saying, but I can’t. The man knows what he’s talking about.
Sanchez likely has seen this kind of scenario play out many times in the past where a smaller fighter bulks up to take on a guy from a heavier weight class. He then goes overboard by putting too much useless weight on, and this leads to the smaller fighter getting bulldozed on fight night.
Brook is blowing his only chance of winning the fight by failing to stay small and advantage of his speed. I’m not surprised that Brook is making this move, because I think he’s got his mind made up that his best chance of winning the contest is to be just as big, if not bigger, than Golovkin on fight night. Unfortunately, when a fighter packs on a ton of muscle weight in the weeks and months before a fight, it does not help their performances.
Brook won’t hit any harder than he did before he put on the weight to get to 176. He’ll just be slower, more muscular, and ready to outdo Golovkin on the beach or for a body-building contest. I imagine that Brook would be beat Golovkin without any problems for the best beach body, but unfortunately that’s the sport they’re going to be competing on when they get inside the ring on September 10. It’s called boxing and Brook is not going to be ready to compete in that sport with all that useless muscle he’s packed on.
I don’t think it’s possible for Brook to strip off the muscle that he’s packed on before September 10. You don’t take off that kind of muscle weight in less than three weeks. The time to take off the muscle is long past. The only thing Brook can do is go out there with his 176lb bulk and figure out how to use his size to his advantage in the ring.
About the only thing I can see helping Brook is if he uses his size to wrestle Golovkin all night long. If Brook gets Golovkin into a grappling contest on the inside, he could tire him out and take his punching power in the same way that Russian Gaydarbek Gaydarbekov wore Golovkin out in the finals of the 2004 Olympics. Gaydarbekov did a lot of clinching on the inside against Golovkin to keep him from throwing punches. Gaydarbekov would then shove Golovkin really hard towards the side when he was separating. I’m not exactly sure why the referee let Gaydarbekov use this move over and over again in the fight, because it looked like he was trying to fling Golovkin to the canvas. It didn’t even look like boxing. It was like a professional wrestling throw down move. The fact that Gaydarbekov was able to use this move for the entire fight without losing points shows you how referees fails to do their job at times to control a fight at the amateur level.
Never the less, Brook could wear Golovkin down in a clinch if he studies what Gaydarbekov did against him so that he could try and duplicate that strategy. That was the last time that Golovkin suffered a loss. Gaydarbekov beat him 28-18 in a clear win. This wasn’t a disputed loss for Golovkin. He definitely lost the fight because he was getting manhandled by the much bigger Russian fighter Gaydarbekov on the inside for entire fight. It was sad to see how the referee was just standing there watching Gaydarbekov throw Golovkin around on the inside without doing anything to stop it.
“Golovkin, I’ve never had a fighter like this. If Kell is there, he’s going to hit him,” said Sanchez.