Will Brook’s training help him against Golovkin?

By Boxing News - 09/01/2016 - Comments

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By Scott Gilfoid: In a sign of pure desperation, Kell Brook (36-0, 25 KOs) has turned to cutting edge training at Sheffield Hallam University to try and help him beat the devastating knockout artist Gennady “GGG” Golovkin (35-0, 32 KOs) in their fight next week on September 10 at the O2 Arena in London, UK.

The clinicians at Hallam University have the 30-year-old Brook using a variety of exercises to try and increase his stamina and strength ahead of his fight against the Kazakhstan fighter Triple G this month. And while Golovkin has stayed true to his old school training methods used my his trainer Abel Sanchez in the mountains at Big Bear, California, Brook is trying new age techniques to try and best GGG.

I don’t know that Brook is anymore ahead of the game with his new training methods than he would have been had he stuck with his past training regimen. When it’s all been said and done, Brook has probably been doing little more than spinning his wheels by messing about at Sheffield’s Hallam University with his extra training.

I wouldn’t be surprised if the training has done little more than worn Brook out more rather than helping him gain an edge for this fight. The basic problem that Brook has is he’s fighting a guy that simply is too good for him. Golovkin just has naturally freakish punching power. You see that right off the bat when you watch him hit the mitts held by his trainer Abel Sanchez. The sound of Golovkin’s hard punches hitting the pads is like mini explosions. Further, we’ve seen the many knockouts that Golovkin has produced during his 10-year pro career from 2006 to 2016.

With a KO percentage of 91%, it shows you how good of a puncher Golovkin is. Even Golovkin’s handshake is said to be extremely powerful and painful. Triple G is just naturally strong as an ox. Golovkin is a natural 170lb fighter. He’s not someone that has eaten his way to the weight like Brook. I don’t know if I buy into that jazz about Brook being a natural 170+ pound fighter. I think he was a smaller guy who ate and bulked up to get to the 170s or 180s.

I think Brook is more of a natural 160lb fighter when eating sensibly, training and being disciplined outside of the ring. Brook isn’t a natural 170lb guy, and he’s not truly huge puncher. Even Sanchez says that. He doesn’t see Brook as being a really hard puncher. I mean, Brook isn’t a Julian Jackson or Tommy Hearn’s type of puncher. He’s never been that type of guy. Unfortunately for Brook, he would need to be that type of puncher for him to beat a guy like Golovkin.

I don’t have much faith in Brook’s extra conditioning at Hallam University. It seems like a nice time waster, to be sure. Where the conditioning could come of use for Brook is for his clinching, which will probably be a major part of his game plan for the Golovkin fight. If Brook can hold for 12 rounds to stall out each round to limit Golovkin’s ability to throw punches, then he might have a chance of winning a controversial decision. It won’t be pretty, but neither was Brook’s clinch-filled decision win over Shawn Porter in 2014. Brook’s loyal fans to this day believe it was a thrilling performance from him. The old saying, ‘love is blind’ comes into play here, because I can’t watch that incredibly boring fight without having drank a lot of coffee to stay awake.

So getting back to Brook’s training at Hallam University, I personally think it’s a fail on his part. Instead of using up his training camp spending time over there working out, Brook would have been better off hitting the track and spent the time running wind sprints, 200 and 400 meter sprints to work on his conditioning. Goodness knows, Brook is going to need to be as well conditioned as possible for him to have a chance of pulling off the upset against Golovkin on September 10.

Above all, Brook needs to be able to go the full 12 round distance for him to have a chance of winning this fight against Triple G. Brook’s best/only chance of beating Golovkin is for it to go 12 rounds. The fight is in the UK, which means that if Brook can go the full distance, he has a chance of winning a decision. It would be bad news if the judges give Brook a win that he doesn’t deserve, but it happens all the time in boxing. I’m just saying. Don’t be surprised if Brook gets his hand raised if the fight goes the distance.

Heck, even if Brook is knocked down two or three times, I can still see him winning if it goes the distance, because he’s going to have the crowd firmly on his side. The fans will be screaming their heads off each time Brook lands anything at all. If all the judges are hearing are the fans screaming when Brook lands an odd shot, I can see them giving the rounds to him? The judges are only human.

Golovkin is well aware of what he’s up against in this fight with the crowd, the venue and the whole setup working against him. Golovkin knows he’s got to go out and knock Brook out to make sure that he doesn’t wind up on the receiving end of a hometown decision. That’s why Golovkin has said repeatedly that he wants to make it a “drama show” on September 10 to make sure he doesn’t get beaten by a decision.

“I not give him a chance for a decision. I think I beat him,” said Golovkin to Fighthub.com. ”If he stands in front of him, I think he’s finished. I beat him. If he’s moving, I think it’ll be a little bit longer, maybe not a decision fight; maybe 10 rounds, eight rounds.”

What Golovkin might not realize that Brook will probably not be standing in front of him OR running in this fight. Brook might choose to grapple with Golovkin like he did with Shawn Porter in 2014. Brook was clinching Porter at every opportunity in that fight to keep him from throwing punches. It was a real old school approach that Brook used. I thought I was watching one of heavyweight John Ruiz’s old fights in looking at how frequently Brook chose to grab Porter in a clinch. There was literally no chance for Porter to throw more than a one of two punches before he was grabbed in a clinch time the two fighters were near each other.

Brook is batting .1000 with him using the punch and grab technique. Doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that Brook is going to go right back to the same nonstop holding strategy that he used in the Porter fight to employ for the Triple G fight. You know the old saying, ‘If it’s not broke, then don’t fix it.’ I think Brook’s Plan-A strategy for the Golovkin fight is to use the ‘punch and grab’ technique to limit Golovkin’s punch output to a mere trickle of punches in each round.

As such, if Golovkin is going to score a knockout in this fight on September 10, then he’s probably going to need to be able to do it by only landing 10 to 20 punches per round. That’s all Golovkin will likely have time to throw in between being grabbed all the time by Brook. I don’t see Golovkin’s punching percentage suffering in this fight.

I think he’ll land as high a percentage as he normally does in his fights. What will cause Golovkin problems is all the frequent grabbing, holding and wrestling that Brook will be doing. That’s where I see Brook’s work at Sheffield’s Hallam University will come in handy. It’ll be in the holding and grappling department. If the referee working the Golovkin-Brook fight isn’t feeling like controlling Brook’s frequently clinching, then Golovkin will be left out there on his own to deal with it himself. It’ll be like how Andre Dirrell was kind of cast adrift in his fight against Carl Froch in Nottingham, UK in 2009, when Froch started roughing him up in the 5th round. With the referee not doing anything to control the fouling, the talented Dirrell was as helpless as a baby in the ring.

If Dirrell had made some adjustments to deal with Froch’s rough stuff, he probably would have won the fight, but he didn’t do what he had to do. Golovkin will need to find a way to pull Brook off of him long enough for him to get his shots off in this fight. It’s going to be hard for Golovkin to do that though, because when you’ve got an opponent that is using non-boxing techniques like nonstop holding, you’re kind of forced to either punch or move to keep them from grabbing or you’re stuck having to depend on the referee to do his job. As we’ve seen in the past, sometimes the referees do their jobs and sometimes they don’t. It’ll be up to the referee that is working the fight if he’s up to the mark to police the clinching from Brook.