By Scott Gilfoid: Kell Brook’s promoter Eddie Hearn came away from Thursday’s final press conference thinking Gennady “GGG” Golovkin looked drained in the face for his title defense this Saturday night against Brook at the O2 Arena in London, England. Hearn thinks that could help Brook win the fight. He also believes that the pressure of the fight is getting to Golovkin.
Personally, I think Golovkin looks good and not drained at all. It’s Brook who looks drained to me. I get the feeling that he’s having a devil of a time trying to lose the weight to get to 160 to make weight. I do think Brook will make it, but I doubt that he’s going to be feeling good on Saturday night when he comes into the ring sluggish from having gained back all the water weight that he took off to make weight.
Photos/Lawrence Lustig, Matchroom Boxing
It appears that Hearn hasn’t seen Golovkin’s past fights, because he always looks this way before his matches. He has to drop 10 pounds or so to make the 160 limit, and he always looks a little lean in the week of his fights.
“I’m going to throw this out there. I didn’t think Gennady Golovkin looked that great. I thought he looked a little bit drawn in the face,” said Hearn to skysports.com. “They scuttled off after and didn’t want to talk to any of the media. I think they know now it’s serious. I think when the fight was first made they thought it was going to be an easy knock-over job.”
I don’t buy what Hearn is saying. I think he’s hoping and praying that Golovkin will be weigh-rained for this fight, because Brook is really up against it in this fight and he needs a lifeline somehow to save him from his fate. Golovkin is the biggest puncher in the middleweight division, and probably even a harder puncher than anyone in the 168lb division.
Brook is basically looking at a knockout loss early in the fight on Saturday night at the O2 Arena in London. If Brook gets whipped badly by Golovkin, it could stop the gravy train for Hearn. Thus far, Brook has been a nice little money maker in bringing in a lot of his loyal boxing fans in his steady flow of dreadful mismatches in Sheffield. The fans don’t seem to care that Brook has been put in with largely mediocre opposition for 12 years. But if Brook gets smashed by Golovkin on Saturday night, the boxing fans might not want to keep seeing him fight. In other words, we could see Brook’s fans abandon ship and swimming towards a new hero in GGG. I don’t know what Hearn could do with Brook at that point other than to try and persuade him to continue draining down to 147 so that he can continue to have a HUGE weight advantage over the opponents he faces in that division.
“Maybe I’m clutching at straws but I’m going to clutch at them because we need to,” said Hearn. “We know the task. Everything has to go our way but as all week, Kell Brook is the calmest person involved in the fight and that gives me confidence.”
Yes, Eddie, you are clutching at straws. You’re kidding yourself if you think that Golovkin is weight drained. Triple G only has to lose 10 pounds to make the 160lb limit and then rehydrate to 170. It’s not like Brook, who will likely be at 175 on the night, and be looking slow like a tank with a broken track on one side. Brook has put on too much weight, Eddie.
You should have pulled him aside a long time ago and told him to back off with the eating and weight training and told him to get on the track and run that useless muscle weight off. Your fighter’s only chance of winning this match was for him to come in as light as possible, but he’s royally blown it by ballooning up to the 170s. Now all he can do is maybe try and clinch and wrestle Golovkin for 12 rounds and hope that the judges love his wrestling form enough to give him rounds that junk. We saw Brook winning rounds doing nothing but holding against Shawn Porter in 2014, so it’s possible he could clinch his way to a controversial decision on Saturday night. I don’t think the boxing world will be too happy if Brook wins like that, because they’ll see it an awful display of the sweet science, but I guess Brook will take a win any way he can get it.
I disagree with Hearn about Brook looking calm. He looks an anxious as a rat running from a large catch in my opinion. In the interviews I’ve seen of Brook today, he looks like he’s ready to jump out of his shoes. He’s talking fast, his eyes shifting constantly, as if looking for Golovkin to pounce on him at any moment. To me, Brook looks like a hunted man, and he DOES NOT seem comfortable or confident in the real sense.
I think what Hearn sees in Brook is what we refer to as ‘false confidence’ that fighters show when they’re putting up a front before they run through the gauntlet. Of course, I’m an expert at seeing though the false confidence bit that I see from fighters. When I put my reality glasses on, I see Brook showing a 1000 yard stare, a stare that you see from a doomed fighter that suggests a despondent state.
I don’t think Brook is mentally ready for this fight, because he doesn’t have the experience, and I think his confidence is a transparent front that he’s putting up. Hearn obviously can’t see through it, but I can. I think is worried as heck about the Golovkin fight, and for good reason. He’s a huge underdog, and there’s a high possibility that he’s going to finish the fight on his face on the canvas. Golovkin has knocked out 22 consecutive opponents, and Brook is likely to be KO victim No.23. I’m just saying.
