By Scott Gilfoid: Kell Brook lost to IBF/IBO/WBA/WBC middleweight champion Gennady “GGG” Golovkin last Saturday night, but he sure wasn’t in the mood to give him credit afterwards. Golovkin stopped the injured Brook in round five after his trainer Dominic Ingle threw in the towel to save him from getting seriously hurt by Triple G at the O2 Arena in London, England.
After the fight, Brook revealed that he had hurt Golovkin not just once, but twice in the fight, saying that he had buckled his knees on two occasions. I’m not sure which round Golovkin was supposedly hurt by Brook, but I guess it doesn’t matter. Brook was well beaten in suffering a broken right eye socket, and his trainer Ingle made sure the fight was stopped by throwing in the white towel to have referee Marlon Wright save Brook.
“I’m devastated. He can obviously punch, but I expected him to be a bigger puncher. I think in the 2nd round, he broke my eye socket,” said Brook. “I think I was catching him with bigger shots, and I was starting to settle into the fight, but I was seeing three or four of him out there. I think I was tricking him. His shots were coming underneath and I was frustrating him. I was standing there at times. I was starting to settle into it, but when you see three or four of him, it’s hard to carry on. Believe me, I hurt him. When you’re in a fight, you can see every movement of a fighter, and I seen his legs buckle a couple of times. I was starting to settle in. I would fight him again. It’s just with the eye; it stopped me from coming forward. I wish I could go on, but when you see five of him, you don’t know which one to hit. It starts to get tough in there when you can’t see. I think I’ll be more suited to 154, light middleweight. I think I’m a big, strong [junior middleweight]. I know that Canelo and Liam Smith are fighting next week. I’ve love to fight the winner. We knew the first five rounds were going to be very tough, but then we were going to start boxing and taking over; having a little war with him and then having a little walk and then get the later rounds.”
Had the injury not occurred for Brook, I do NOT think he would have been able to take over the fight in the 2nd half of the contest. With the way that Golovkin had turned up the pressure on his offense starting in the 4th round, there was no way that Brook could last under that kind of heat from him. Golovkin was not giving Brook any room to run, and he was starting to nail him with body shots that seemed to take the air out of him.
If you look at round five in slow motion, you see Golovkin landing a right to the midsection of Brook that caused him to double over. Brook then dropped his hands and stopped punching completely and took a series of big head shots from Golovkin. Brook moved along the ropes, continuing to take head shots until the fight was stopped. That same scenario would have played out even without an injury to Brook. He looked tired from the weight that he put on to bulk up to middleweight, and was not comfortable once Golovkin hit him hard to the body. Golovkin hadn’t really been throwing a lot of body shots until the 4th and 5th rounds. He had been wasting time trying to hit Brook to the head, which proved to be extremely difficult due to his head movement. But once Golovkin nailed Brook to the body in the 5th, he took the fight out of him completely.
Ingle was smart to see that Brook was hurt from the body shots, so he quickly heaved the white towel of surrender into the ring to have the fight stopped. It was a predictable move on Ingle’s part, because Brook potentially has a long career ahead of him, and his career might have been shortened had he stayed out there and soaked up more punishment from Golovkin. That’s why I think it’s ludicrous for Brook to be saying that he would been “taking over” the fight against Golovkin in the later rounds if not for the injury. I don’t see that as being something that would have happened if Brook hadn’t been injured. If he didn’t get injured, then Brook would have broken down by Golovkin in the 5th and 6th, and I think that would be as far as the fight went. Like I said, Golovkin was starting to target Brook’s midsection with his punches and he was having a lot of success in landing those shots. He realized that he could hit Brook to the body quite frequently, and he was wearing him down.
With Brook saying that he hurt Golovkin, I almost wish they would fight each other a second time so that we could see what an uninjured Brook would do against him. I just don’t think that’s realistic at this point. Golovkin won the fight fair and square and will be moving forward with his career to bigger and better things. For his part, Brook will be out of commission for a while with his eye injury. Brook will lick his wounds for an undetermined amount of time before coming back to resume his boxing career. If Brook can start winning again and pick up some nice scalps from the 154lb division by beating the Charlo brothers, Liam Smith, Erislandy Lara, then maybe we could see him and Golovkin fight a rematch. I just don’t see it. I think Brook has his 15 minutes of fame as the IBF welterweight belt holder, and I cannot see him being able to find the same kind of success in the junior middleweight division or at middleweight. There’s no reason for Golovkin to fight a guy that is heading downwards with his career, which is where I see Brook heading. I don’t see him being able to pick off a vulnerable champion at 154 or 160, because I see the belt holders in those divisions as being too good for him.