By Allan Fox: The World Boxing Association has decided not to sanction WBA middleweight champion Gennady Golovkin’s title defense against Kell Brook on Saturday night due to Brook not being a middleweight. Brook is moving up two divisions from the welterweight division to take the fight on September 10 at the O2 Arena in London, England.
Golovkin’s IBF/IBO/WBC middleweight titles will be up for grabs in the Brook fight. The WBA will let Golovkin take the fight with Brook without stripping him of his title. They just won’t let him have their title on the line for the fight. Brook has never fought at welterweight before and he’s not ranked in the top 15 at middleweight.
“What I most regret is that there are no boxers at 160 pounds who will fight against ‘Triple G,’ and Brook has to move up two divisions to fight against him,” WBA president Gilberto Mendoza Jr. said via ESPN.com.
Golovkin’s promoter Tom Loeffler points out that the WBA sanctioned the fight between Adrien Broner and former WBA welterweight champion Paulie Malignaggi in 2013, when Malignaggi was the WBA champion. Broner moved up two divisions from the lightweight division to fight and beat Malignaggi. Roy Jones Jr. moved up from light heavyweight to beat WBA heavyweight champion John Ruiz to snatch his title in 2003.
In some ways, it’s not all that surprising that at least one of the sanctioning bodies balked at the idea of sanctioning the Golovkin-Brook fight. After all, it’s not all that fair to the contenders the middleweight division if the champions are going to be allowed to fight fighters from other divisions one after another.
It goes on all the time obviously in boxing, as well as in the MMA sport. With boxing being so permissive to fighters from lower weight classes being allowed to leap frog over contenders to get world title shots, it’s now becoming increasingly rare for a sanctioning body to stand up to this kind of thing. If there was an overall commission in control of the sport, they might be able to address these kinds of things with rules. But it doesn’t have an overall commission. Instead, there are commissions in every state.
Brook at least has the size to be competing with Golovkin. Brook weighed in recently at 167.8 pounds compared to Golovkin’s 162.9 pounds during the World Boxing Council’s seven-day weigh-in. In terms of weight, Brook has more than enough size to compete against Golovkin. This isn’t a fight where there will be a huge weight difference like we saw in the Saul “Canelo” Alvarez vs. Amir Khan fight last May and in the Danny Garcia vs. Rod Salka fight.
Brook will have the size to compete on an even playing field against GGG. Whether Brook has the chin, power or talent to compete with Golovkin is unclear. Golovkin has been knocking out all the middleweights he’s been facing, so it’s not as if things will be any different with him now fighting a welterweight.
If Golovkin gets past Brook on Saturday night, he could be facing WBA (regular) middleweight champion Daniel Jacobs next if he beats Sergio Mora in their rematch on September 9 on Premier Boxing Champions on Spike. The WBA plans on ordering the Golovkin-Jacobs fight after he faces Brook. It will be interesting to see if Jacobs chooses to keep his WBA title or if he’ll vacate it the way Peter Quillin vacated his WBO title when he was supposed to fight Matt Karobov in the past.